


truth ran free (closer to the edge)

by writing_as_tracey



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Father/Daughter Bonding, Gen, Slow-burn Bellarke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:59:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2171904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_as_tracey/pseuds/writing_as_tracey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But Clarke was not willing to let her father go. Despite her stubbornness, despite her desire to help others which led her to take an apprenticeship with her renowned mother, Clarke was more her father’s daughter than her mother’s. And Clarke was not willing to let her father go.</p><p> </p><p>AU where Jake Griffin isn't floated. A father/daughter bonding fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> the 100 and its characters, etc., in this version belong to the CW and Jason Rothenberg. Original characters from Kass Morgan. No money being made or profit from this fanfic.

truth ran free (closer to the edge)

*

_Can you imagine a time when the truth ran free?_   
_The birth of a song, the death of a dream_   
_Closer to the edge_

– 30 Seconds to Mar, “Closer to the Edge”

*

They came for her father on a Tuesday afternoon.

Clarke was returning from her apprenticeship with her mother in the medical bay, eager to rest and relax by watching some more old football games on their projector screen. She hadn’t expected to find her father recording a message to the people of the Ark, explaining that the air was running out.

She also didn’t expect that she was able to convince him to put the data pad down and watch the game with her, in an effort to buy him some time to rethink things. (Not that she wanted him to rethink things; she believed that the people should know too, but she also heard her parents arguing well into the night about it. She wanted to give them at least one more day to come to a compromise.)

But in a strange twist of fate, as Clarke meandered from her small bedroom to the living area, past the small cubby her father was using as his desk, Clarke stopped. She stopped, looked at the data pad, and let her finger hover over the ‘play’ button. She could hear her father, not more than ten feet from her, arranging the living room and turning the projector on, as well as picking a game for them to watch.

Over the beginning fanfare of cheers from a long-ago crowd, so that he couldn’t hear, Clarke pressed ‘play.’ She listened to her father’s message. She felt it resonate within her.

And that’s when they opened the Griffin’s door, guards in black and their batons up as they dragged Jake to his feet.  

“Dad, _no_!” Clarke cried out, scrambling from the desk where she inadvertently knocked over the data pad so that it slid behind the desk. “What are you doing? Leave him alone!”

Clarke darted towards, pushing ineffectively at the guards, one who shoved her violently back.

“Clarke! Stop, no!” Jake struggled against the guards, his blue eyes – the eyes he passed down to her – on his daughter. “Leave her alone.”

He stopped struggling, throwing his hands up to show his cooperation as Clarke stood on shaky legs.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, turning her eyes from the guards who stood silent beside her father, to finally the two men who hovered in the doorway. The guards pulled Jake aside, revealing Thelonious Jaha and the newly-appointed Commander Shumway.

“Theo...?” asked a rather shell-shocked Jake, his eyes wide as he took in the form of his friend, who stood with bowed head and hands clasped behind his back.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” the leader of the Ark said solemnly, his eyes raising once to meet his best friend’s. “But this must be done for the greater good of our people.”

“Greater good?” shrieked Clarke, hands flying to her waist as Thelonious’s eyes turned to hers. She vaguely registered Shumway’s hand hovering over his pistol at waist-height at her voice. “Since when is it for the _greater good_ to hide the truth from the people?”

“Clarke,” urged her father in a low tone, eyes fixed on her. “Stop it. Don’t say anything.”

Clarke’s blue eyes bounced from her best friend’s father, the man who ran the Ark, to her father, who looked at her imploringly. His own eyes – the same colour as hers – begged her to remain silent, to not speak and to let him continue through with his plan to the bitter end.

But Clarke was not willing to let her father go. Despite her stubbornness, despite her desire to help others which led her to take an apprenticeship with her renowned mother, Clarke was more her father’s daughter than her mother’s. And Clarke was not willing to let her father go. Not yet.

“I found his paperwork,” she said evenly, turning back to face Jaha in her confession. “I saw and read what was happening in engineering and realised the truth. My dad caught me and we argued about how I wanted to let everyone know.”

Clarke could feel the anger burning in her, slowly boiling as she continued, letting her righteousness take over. “I recorded a message on the data pad and was going to sneak into the Communications Tower to play it all over the station. The people of the Ark have a right to know!”

“Stop! Clarke, _stop_!” begged Jake, prompting the two guards next to him to grab him again and pull him back.

Jaha was looking thunderstruck at Clarke as she continued to speak, louder and louder. Shumway, however, was looking as though he just won the lottery.

“We’re dying!” Clarke shouted over her father’s voice. She shoved her hands into her trouser pockets to hide their trembling. “You’re killing us and won’t figure out a way to survive! The people of the Ark deserve to know what’s happening to them! What _will_ happen to them!”

A gasp from the doorway drew Clarke’s attention. Her mother stood, pale, with a hand pressed to her mouth in horror.

“Abby, _stop her_ ,” demanded Jake loudly, grunting as one of the guards yanked him back tightly, struggling to hold him in place. But Abby Griffin was locked on the up-tilted face of her daughter, whose jaw and chin jutted out in stubbornness and anger.

She knew that look.

“Going to stop me too, mom?” asked Clarke without a waver in her voice, squaring her shoulders. “Going to tell me to not tell everyone how we’re dying? Going to tell them that I don’t know what I’m talking about?”

Clarke didn’t know what she was talking about. She had overheard enough arguments to know that the Ark was dying and that the mechanical parts required for fixing the air supply were badly damaged, and they were running on borrowed time. But she also knew she was sixteen, nearly seventeen.

They wouldn’t float her.

Not yet, anyway.

But maybe she bought her father enough time to fix it. To find another solution, to save as many people as possible because that’s what the Griffins do: help people. And they couldn’t do that if her father – the Senior Environmental Engineer in the Ark – was floated.

Jaha blinked, his own dark complexion drastically pale underneath a tired and stress-lined face. Dark circles under his eyes told her how much he struggled with his decisions to come for her father.

With a heaving breath, he turned to the guards holding Jake back, casting a quick, sorrowful glance at his best friend; then, his eyes turned to Shumway and Abby in the doorway. With a sigh, he quietly said, “Commander Shumway. Please arrest Clarke Griffin for treason.”

Abby began crying, muttering “No, no, no, please Thelonious, no...” while Jake shouted above everyone: “Not Clarke! It’s not Clarke! It’s me, take me! I’m the one you want! Not my daughter!”

Raising his voice above them all, Thelonious Jaha continued, “Escort Ms. Griffin to the Sky Box, where she will be placed in solitary confinement until her eighteenth birthday when we will revisit this.”

Shumway nodded and grasped Clarke by the upper arm as he led her from her living room and her parents. As they passed the door, Abby tried reaching for her, her hands plucking at Clarke’s shirt as they passed by and instead causing her to collapse on the grating of the station.

“Clarke,” her mother sobbed, “ _No._ ”

Clarke pursed her lips together tightly, sucking in a deep breath of air as she blinked back tears. _I know whatI’m was doing_ , she repeated to herself. _I know what I’m was doing_.

“Damn you, Thelonious!” she heard Jake thunder. “How could you? _How could you?_ ”

Behind her, the Griffin household’s door hissed shut, and she and Shumway stood alone, cut off from the noise and chaos.

“This way, Ms. Griffin,” Shumway said, gently pulling her in the direction of the Sky Box and away from Phoenix Station.

 _I know what I’m doing_ , Clarke repeated again, blinking back further tears as she passed people by, watching Shumway escort her with wide eyes.

“Clarke?!”

She did not turn, or speak, when Wells Jaha shouted her name, mouth slack as Shumway pulled her by, nor did she stop or speak when her mother’s sometimes-friend and second-in-command of the Ark Marcus Kane tried stopping them by commanding Shumway to tell him what was happening.

She didn’t speak when they stripped her of her clothing and gave her standard slacks and a top to wear for confinement, and she didn’t speak when they told her the meal schedule or her rights as a prisoner in solitary.

She didn’t speak when the closed the door of her cell, leaving her staring a tiny, barred window that overlooked the blue-and-green earth below. She didn’t speak as she slunk to the ground, wrapping her arms around her knobby knees, clutching them tight to her body.

 _I know what I’m doing_ , she thought once more.

“I know what I’m doing,” she said aloud, and then began sobbing.

*

She lost track of time in the cell, with the days eventually running into each other and only the circuit of the Ark’s gravitational rotations telling her any time had passed as the earth came and went in her window.

She hoped her plan worked, that she saved her father from being floated. She received no word from the outside world; no word of her parents from the guards whose shifts constantly changed and soon each slick-haired, cold-eyed guard looked like the last.

And then, one day, her father came for her.

Clarke was lying on the ground of the cell when the door slid open, but this happened often enough that she assumed it was a food drop. Until the feet hesitantly shuffled in and a voice tentatively asked, “Clarke?”

Clarke shot to her feet and whirled in surprise, staring with greedy eyes at her father. Jake Griffin looked tired, bags under his eyes and an off-colour to her face that told Clarke just how long it had been. His clothes were rumpled and stained, and his pale blond hair was messily sticking up, like he had run his hands through it enough times.

“Dad?” murmured Clarke, before darting towards him and clutching him tightly around the middle. His arms came up and held his daughter tight to him as well, resting his cheek on his daughter’s head.

“Hey, kiddo,” he smiled against her. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” whispered back Clarke. She then pulled away, but not fully, to look up at him. “But what’s happening? Why are you here? Is everything ok? Mom?—”

Jake shushed her. “I don’t have much time. I called in a favour to see you to begin with. I’m still working on it, Clarke, but it’s slow going. I don’t think anything I do anymore is going to change the situation.”

“We need to tell people! We have to,” said Clarke, frowning. “But if you say anything, they’ll kill you.”

“I know.”

Clarke’s eyes met her father’s. “No. I didn’t get myself put in her so you could die. You’re not going to do it. So, don’t.”

“Clarke...”

“Stop it!” she said, tearing herself from his arms and wrapping them around her as she took several steps back. “You’re going to fix it or find another way. I’m not – I won’t... you _can’t_.”

Jake turned his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “Clarke, kiddo... I’ve been trying to convince Jaha to look things over and he says he might be willing. To believe the best in the people of the Ark.”

“Why should he when it was Wells who told him? They’re both the same!” retorted Clarke hotly. “I told Wells in secret because I couldn’t keep it in, and look what happened! I’m in solitary and they almost floated you! You can’t trust them.”

Jake frowned. “You think Wells told his father?”

“Didn’t he?” countered Clarke, sniffing.

“No, Clarke, he didn’t,” sighed Jake, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not – that’s not important, kiddo. What’s important is that I’m working on a way to let everyone know. It’s slow but... if it works, it gets you out of solitary soon.”

Clarke blinked, her chest tightening in hope. “Soon? How long has it been?”

“You’ve been here six months, Clarke,” replied her father, a pained expression on his face. “I’m worry I didn’t come sooner.”

“I’m glad you came at all,” she replied, moving forward and hugging him again. “I haven’t seen anyone else.”

She felt his body tense. “No one?”

“No.”

“Not even your mother?”

Clarke frowned against the roughly-spun patch-worked shirt her father wore. “No, mom hasn’t come by, either.”

Jake sighed and let go of Clarke, digging through his pocket as she stepped back. He brought his hand out, fist tightly closed around something.

A quick succession of knocks on the door and a rough, “one minute, Griffin,” caused Jake to blink rapidly and Clarke to mash her lips together in an effort not to cry.

“I’m going to do my best, Clarke,” he said lowly, a tight smile on his face. “I’m going to find a way to get you out and save everyone.”

“Save everyone first. Then worry about me,” declared Clarke, a smile on her face, although a different one to his. “They’re more important.”

Jake forced a chuckle, looking at his daughter as he replied. “They’re not my daughter, but I’ll see what I can do. And for now, kid?” he held out his fist, opening it to reveal a tiny piece of black charcoal chalk. “Keep dreaming. Keep believing. Keep hoping. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Clarke took the chalk and nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay. Love you, kiddo,” he said.

“Love you, too, dad,” whispered Clarke and then Jake slipped out of her cell and the door was slammed shut, and she was alone again.

 _I know what I’m doing_ , she thought, and this time, it wasn’t tinged with the desperation she previously felt. This time, it tasted like the future.

*

By the time Clarke had completely covered the walls, floor and partially the ceiling, of her cell, she knew that several months had passed and she was nearing her eighteenth birthday. Her father had not managed to visit her again, nor had anyone else tried to come by for a visit. Her stay in solitary was entirely that: solitary.

She began polishing a design of galaxy swirls on the floor, at the perfect angle to see out of her tiny window to the galaxies and earth beyond her reach. She wasn’t expecting anything from that day – her entire sleep cycle and habits were messed up due to the irregular times of her meals and the lack of artificial light control for day/night scenarios, leaving Clarke disoriented and fuzzy most of the time.

As such, she was startled when her cell door opened and two burly guards entered.

“Face the wall, 319,” the first through the door instructed tightly, clutching something in his hand while the one behind flexed his hand on his baton.

“What? No,” argued Clarke, rising to her feet quickly, a quick pass of fear on her face as she did so. “It’s not my birthday yet! I’m not eighteen yet!”

“Face the wall,” the guard demanded again, this time reaching forward and grabbing her by the shoulder to turn her while the second reached for her wrist.

“No! No!” cried Clarke, yanking her shoulder forward and out of the first guards’ grasp, and elbowing the second in the gut. She took their surprise and sprinted past them and out the cell door, knowing that whatever decision she made, it would ultimately lead to her death. Where could someone hide on a spaceship without any means of escape?

“Stop her! Stop prisoner 319!” one of the guards shouted as he pushed himself out of the cell, holding an arm against his stomach.

Clarke’s eyes moved back and forth, looking below at the cells in the Sky Box as other prisoners – all around her age – were escorted out by guards. Some were peacefully following the instructions – those on the bottom levels, while those further and further up, closer to where Clarke was, were unruly.

Her breathing increased into pants, and Clarke glanced back to see the first guard exit the cell and prop the second up as he made to move towards her. Clarke began backing away slowly, keeping her eyes on the slowly advancing guard.

“Clarke.”

The guard stopped, so she stopped and turned her body enough to see who spoke while keeping the guard in her sight.

Jake stood behind her, and Clarke felt herself crumble.

“Dad,” she sobbed, “Dad, I can’t do this – I’m not eighteen yet, they can’t float me. It’s too early, it’s too soon.”

“ _Ssssh_ ,” Jake said, clutching his daughter to him tightly and stroking her back. “You’re not being floated, kid. I promise.”

“I’m not?” she asked, tear-stained.

Behind her, the guard moved forward slowly, eyes on the girl.

“No,” said Jake quietly. “No, Clarke. You’re going to the Earth while I finish things up here. I promise it’ll be okay.”

“The _Earth_?” gapped Clarke. “But dad – no one – how? What am I supposed to do?”

Jake smiled tightly at his daughter, smoothing her hair down once more as the guard knelt behind her, quietly, and gently stuck a syringe into her neck. Immediately, Clarke began to sag and flutter.

“You’ll survive Clarke,” said Jake, his voice fading away. “You’ll take care of everyone and lead them and save them. I love you. You’ll be okay, Clarke. I promise. _I promise_.”

Then, everything faded to black.

 

When she came to, Clarke was tightly strapped into a bucket seat, next to a younger boy quivering beside her. She moved her head side to side, taking in the view: four rows of seats, two on either side of the metal ship she was in, facing each other. Each row, holding at least six teenagers each, were filled to the brim. All were in their original clothing, not the standard Sky Box uniforms of those imprisoned. Some were crying, like the boy beside her, while others were glaring at nothing and everyone as they sat quietly in anger.

“What’s going on?” asked Clarke, clearing her throat. “What’s happening?”

“Don’t know?” asked a skinny girl from across Clarke with a bored look on her face. Her dark blond hair was braided back and tightly pulled away from her face, and her eyes were weary as she glanced at Clarke.

“I was...” Clarke shook her head. “I don’t remember. I tried to escape my cell, but they... they drugged me?”

The girl looked at Clarke with a little more interest, but it was veiled. She raised her eyebrows. “Well, welcome to Hell, then. They’re sticking us on a spaceship and sending us to Earth to die. Guess they needed more room.”

“Sending us to Earth?” Clarke repeated, blinking, and slowly the memory of her father returned to her, his whispered words and promises. She closed her eyes and rested her head on the seat, tilting it up.

The girl across from her looked Clarke up and down. “What were you in for, anyway?” she asked, tilting her head to the side. “I stole.”

Clarke rolled her head to look at the girl, her eyes moving away when the ship began to shudder. A loud _click_ signalled the magnets holding the ship in place were disconnected and they were slowly floating in space away from the Ark.

Clarke’s eyes returned to the girl across from her, who met her eyes after looking around the ship in fright.

“Treason,” she finally replied quietly. “I committed treason.”

The girl’s eyebrows shot up and she opened her mouth to speak but the thrusters turned on and the ship began to shudder violently as they hurled towards the Earth.

A tiny screen in the corner of the ship turned on and crackled with static. Then, Councilman Jaha appeared on screen, beginning a message to the hundred delinquents chosen to test the Earth for sustainability.

Clarke turned her head away from watching, while someone, somewhere in the ship jeeringly laughed, “ _Your dad’s a dick, Wells_!” She swallowed heavily, wondering if that meant her best friend was on the ship with her – and why.

The boy beside Clarke was reciting the prayers of the Tree and the dominant religion on the Ark. She turned her head away to look at the boy on her other side, who grit his teeth and kept his eyes tightly closed.

“I’m Monroe, by the way. Monroe Humphrey,” the girl said loudly to Clarke over the noise of the engines and thrusters. “Who’re you?”

 _If they were going to survive the Earth_ , thought Clarke, _I might need some friends_. She forced a smile on her lips and called back, “Clarke Griffin.”

Monroe’s eyes widened, and the boy on Clarke’s side who had his eyes tightly shut popped them open to opening appraise her.

“From _the Council_?” gapped Monroe, wrapping her hand tightly around her seat strap until her knuckles went white. “And you’re dying with _us_ for _committing treason_?” She laughed bitterly. “Guess no one is really safe on the Ark.”

“Tell me about it,” muttered Clarke.

From below, Clarke could hear someone scream as the ship shuddered worse and hit something – something that wasn’t truly there but enough of a barrier that the ship tilted and tried to right itself.

“What was that?” the teen next to Clarke asked.

“The atmosphere,” she replied in monotone. “It’s going to heat up, and if we don’t break apart in the next minute, and we survive the implosion of landing, then we’ll make it to Earth.”

“Oh, is that all?” snarked Monroe, bringing her other hand up to grasp at the belt. A glint of silver caught Clarke’s eyes, and she frowned.

“What’s that?” she asked, nodding towards Monroe’s wrist.

“That’s our wristband,” the teen next to her answered instead. “You have one too. Didn’t you feel it?”

Clarke hadn’t, mainly because she wasn’t feeling anything. But now that he had mentioned it, she glanced at her right wrist and spotted the chunky silver wristband, tightly secured to her. A dull pain pulsed from her wrist, and as Clarke turned it over, she realised that six sensors were embedded into the wristband, pushed through her skin and muscle to attach deeply into her wrist to monitor her vitals.

 _Oh, mom,_ she thought, recognising the wristband as data communicators. _Is this what you meant, dad? Working on a way to save everyone by using us first?_

A commotion from below – which made Clarke assume there were numerous levels – turned into shouts and then screams as the ship jerked back and forth and then slammed into something very hard and unyielding.

Clarke immediately unbuckled her seat, while the teen beside her copied her. The crying and praying boy remained in his seat, pale and frightened. Clarke didn’t spare him a glance as she moved across the grated floor to the circular airlock, which remained opened during landing and tied off with a strong sliver of fiber.

Monroe was behind Clarke as she dropped down the ladder to the next landing, her eyes moving swiftly over the cluster of teenagers near the front of the drop ship. A tall man, in a guard’s uniform, had his hand on the latch.

“You can’t go out there! It’s toxic!”

Clarke startled; Wells _was_ on board, and shouting at the tall man.

“We don’t take orders from you, Jaha Junior,” he replied back with a very lazy and smug grin, his hand reaching for the lever again.

“ _Bellamy!_ ” a girl cried, pushing through the crowd and launching herself at the guard, who grabbed her tightly and hugged her close. Clarke swallowed heavily, glancing away from the scene as it reminded her too much of her father.

“Who’s that?” Monroe asked from beside her, while the teen from Clarke’s other side, a tall, broad-shouldered male with dark skin, dark brown eyes and a close haircut, snorted.

“You must’ve been in lockup when she arrived,” he said.

Monroe scowled, and a girl from somewhere shouted loudly, “That’s Octavia Blake! The girl hidden in the floor!”

“Hidden in the floor?” asked Clarke quietly.

The teen nodded. “She’s a second child.”

Clarke and Monroe nodded, as that answered everything they could possibly ask. The girl, however, leaped from her brother’s embrace and faced the crowd with an angry look on her face.

He reached forward and touched her shoulder, saying something that was too low for Clarke to hear from the back of the crowd. She watched as Octavia Blake nodded, and her brother, Bellamy, yanked the lever down, opening the drop ship door.

“No!” Wells shouted.

Light crept through the cracks as the door first hissed opened, then burst into the compartment, blinding everyone. When Clarke opened her eyes against the glare, Octavia had already stepped on the ramp.

“ _We’re back, bitches!”_ she shouted – and then, it was a stream of laughing, hollering, hooting teens bursting from the ship and stepping onto the ground for the first time.

The teen beside her laughed and ran forward. Even Monroe smiled, stepping forward.

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, when she saw Clarke hadn’t moved.

Instead, Clarke turned to face the shorter girl, shaking her head. “I’m going to look for a map, I think. Figure out where we’ve landed first. I doubt the Ark was kind enough to give us food and water, so we’re going to need to get some if we want to live.”

“ _If_ we can live,” Monroe retorted. “Don’t know if the radiation out there won’t kill us dead in five minutes.”

Clarke nodded. “True,” she said slowly, “But if we _do_ survive past tonight, then I think I’m going to want to know where I am and where I can find something to eat.”

Monroe shrugged. “Suit yourself, Griffin!” the blonde eyed Clarke, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe it – treason huh? Guess there’s more to you than you look.” She began backing away and as she jumped out of the ship, shouted, “See you around!”

Clarke turned and went back to the level she was on, rooting through boxes and containers that came loose from their netting during the landing, until she found a collection of faded, yellowed, and dated maps. All were for the same area, assuming they landed correctly.

She was tentative as she stepped out of the drop ship, the light blinding, and the air fresher and cleaner than she ever experienced. She was almost dizzy by the amount of oxygen her lungs were taking in, her breaths deep as she took them in through the nose and long in her exhalations.

They were in a large crater that the ship made upon its crash, several trees burning behind him but otherwise leaving no trail or debris train, meaning the ship landed straight without streaking.

Birds called to one another, and somewhere she could hear a strange whirring and chirping noise that wasn’t birdlike at all. The leaves on the trees rustled as a gentle breeze parted them, and the air was slightly hazy. Already Clarke could feel her straight hair frizzing in the humidity; a glance up towards the sky told her that there were gentle, white, puffy clouds rolling over them without a hint of grey.

She stepped forward, looking left and right until she found a part of the drop ship that can come off during landing: a large piece of wing.

 _I know what I’m doing_ , thought Clarke, unfolding the map and smoothing it out. She glanced up between the burning trees, at the jagged mountains beyond them, with a frown. They weren’t snow-capped, but the distinct peak on one had Clarke frowning at the map angrily.

“What’s with the face, Princess?” asked  a teen with an easy grin.

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped back, looking away from the map to him.

He threw his hands up in reply. “Whoa, sorry. Okay then.” He paused. “So, what’s wrong?”

“What’s _wrong_?” asked Clarke, clearly fed up. First Monroe looked at her like she was different, then that kid next to her, and now this guy was bugging her. She took a deep breath and reminded herself, _I can do this._ _I know what I’m doing._

“They landed us on the wrong freaking mountain, that’s what!” Clarke finally exhaled, pursing her lips.

“How do you know that?” the teen asked.

“She learned from her dad,” a familiar voice answered for her, making Clarke turn around to see Wells.

She nearly groaned. “What are you doing here, Wells?”

He blinked. “Answering his question.”

“I meant _on Earth_ ,” replied Clarke between her teeth, turning back to her map, as she ran a finger from there they were supposed to land, _Mount Weather_ , to where they were, several miles away and on a range across from where they were supposed a land. An entire valley lay between them.

“When I heard what was happening, I knew I had to get on the ship,” Wells was explaining, with the teen beside her watching avidly despite her ignoring him. “I knew I had to be there for you. So I got arrested.”

Clarke felt her back muscles tense. She didn’t ask for him to come. She didn’t ask for anything, other than to save her father’s life so he could save everyone else’s on the Ark.

 _I know what I’m doing_.

“Fine. Whatever,” Clarke sighed, folding the map back up incorrectly so that their position and half the valley was visible. She turned, thinking of going back into the ship when the other teen stopped her.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” he asked.

“Getting some stuff together before heading out,” replied Clarke. “We need food and water to survive.”

“No we don’t,” another voice interrupted, and Clarke nearly groaned in annoyance. Was _everyone_ listening in to her conversations now?

The tall guard with the slicked back hair – Octavia Blake’s brother – was watching Clarke with carefully narrowed eyes. His uniform was pristine, and Clarke could tell with the way he held himself in it that he was, at some point at least, a guardsman on the Ark.

He continued, “This isn’t the Ark! We don’t have to do anything! There are no privileged,” and he said that with a pointed look at her and Wells, “and there is no class system! We can do whatever the hell we want!”

“Okay,” Clarke nodded. “You do _whatever the hell you want_ , while I get whatever the hell _I_ want in terms of stuff because I’m getting the hell out of here. I’m going to find something to eat and drink. And when you’re done doing _whatever the hell you want_ ,” Clarke thought that she should lay off the sarcasm and mimicry if she wanted to make friends, “you can come and find me and then maybe _I’ll_ decide to tell you _what the hell I found_.”

Behind the elder Blake sibling, several mean-looking teens scowled and made to move forward. The boy who had been speaking to Clarke before Wells shifted beside her, and Wells shifted as well.

The Blake, however, turned the corner of his lips up in a slight smile. He inclined his head, and Clarke read his eyes and body language easily.

 _Touché,_ he was saying.

“If you’re going exploring, I’m coming with you!” the girl, Octavia, piped up.

“Absolutely not,” responded her brother just as quickly.

“Oh, shut up Bell, you’re not the boss of me,” the girl retorted with a flip of her straight black hair, eyes turning to Clarke. “I’m going.”

“Not alone with _her_ ,” he growled.

“She’s not going alone,” the boy beside her spoke, confidently. “I’m going too.” He glanced to his right and clasped the shoulders of two other boys watching the group, one Asian and the other with goggles. “And they’re going, too.”

“What?”

“We are?”

“See?” Octavia beamed at Bellamy.

Clarke wanted to roll her eyes. This was _not_ how she imagined Earth to be like, and it was shaping up to be a headache. “Fine. We’re all going. Happy, now?” she turned her back on the group and began moving towards the tree line. Forget a bag or anything, she wanted this over with. “We’re leaving now and should be back in a bit.”

With a scowl on his face, Bellamy Blake watched as Clarke began leading a group of four into the forest, a petulant look on her face as her plans were derailed from under her thanks to Octavia.

“Where are we going, Princess?” the floppy-haired teen asked loudly, pushing aside a branch for Octavia while the other two boys he commandeered into coming got hit in the face.

 _I know what I’m doing_ , she thought again, blinking at the sky. _But I sure wish that I was doing it alone_.

*

On board the Ark, Jake Griffin was sitting in his desk chair, back to the living room and his wife as Abigail Griffin pleaded with him to listen to her.

His shoulders were angrily set, and his hands were shaking slightly as he went over another roll of schematics his technicians unearthed for him from a dusty cabinet in one of the out-of-bounds B-station.

“Jake, _please_! There was no other way. This buys you more time,” Abby cried, wringing her hands in front of her.

Squaring his shoulders, Jake glanced over one dispassionately. Ever since his discovery of the life support system, his wife was a strong advocate against telling the Council. Despite their caution, Clarke learned of the engineering flaw and took it upon herself, being under eighteen, to confess and to buy Jake time to fix the system.

At first, he did; he tried to fix the system. However, six months into his attempts, he and his crew realised that they couldn’t do anything. At that time, he called in a favour Nygel owed to get him to see his daughter. She obliged, and Jake saw Clarke for the first time in months. All she wanted, however, was to know that he was doing anything and everything he could to save the people on the Ark.

And he was failing.

Immediately after seeing Clarke, he went to his once-best friend (he couldn’t look at Thelonious the same way ever again after he _knowingly_ sentenced Clarke to solitary, knowing that it was Jake’s work and that she was taking the fall for him), and asked for time. A way for him to look over his calculations, his schematics, his ideas to buy them time.

Despite that, despite Jaha listening, the Council – one his _wife_ was on – went ahead with a way to save them a month or two by removing the juvenile delinquents from the Sky Box prison by sending them to Earth instead. One hundred teenagers from the ages of twelve to seventeen would be sent to Earth – to die – to save the two and a half thousand lives.

It made Jake sick. Regardless of his daughter being one of those hundred, the thought of sending their _children_ , their future, to die, made him physically ill.

And his wife was at the center of it.

“They’ll live! I know they will, Jake!” she cried. “The Earth is habitable! They can survive and live and _thrive_! I’m monitoring them and they’re doing fine! Clarke’s _fine_!”

“That’s not the point, Abby!” snapped back Jake, frustrated with his wife and the situation.

“Then, what...?”

Anything else she was going to say remained unfinished as Councilman Kane entered the Griffin quarters unannounced, after a brief staccato knock on their quarter door. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, his dark eyes darting between Jake’s stiff shoulders and Abby’s bowed form. “But Thelonious has been shot. We need your help, Abby.”

Abby’s eyes widened and she nodded, leaving the room with Kane without speaking to her husband. Instead, Jake sighed in relief in the silence of the Griffin residence – with one less resident – and quickly left, heading towards the same B-block his technician found the old schematics in – as they weren’t the only old thing gathering dust.

He entered his passcode at B-block, entering the sparsely lit, two-tier room. Below, a young girl was welding a piece of metal to a large, oddly-shaped item.

“Hello, Raven,” he said, ambling down the stairs and running a critical eye over the large, bulbous shape.

The girl lifted the welder’s helmet mask from her face, revealing a grin. “Hey, Mr. Griffin.”

“How does our pod look?” he asked, turning to face the orange and yellow pod.

“Okay,” she answered, turning the welder’s flame off.

Jake ran a hand over the side of the pod, where the door was closed. “Will she be up and running, soon?”

Raven nodded. “Hopefully. A week at most. I think.”

“Good.”

“You still planning on going down?” she asked, watching the man who specifically sought her out for her engineering and G-space skills.

Jake nodded. “I need to make sure Clarke is alright and that the Earth is habitable. That’s what Abby wants, but I’m going down to see if we can even survive a launch.”

“There aren’t any other pods,” said Raven unnecessarily.

“There’s two other drop ships,” replied Jake, coming back to the front where Raven stood, covered in greasy overalls and smudge marks. “And worse case, the Ark itself, when it was in its twelve pieces, were spaceships designed to bring people to space. It can bring people back to Earth.”

“I guess,” Raven responded dubiously, ready to get back to work.

“I can finish the calculations on ground after my trajectory and entry. I can ensure it’s possible to survive once I know what things are like there,” argued Jake, sensing Raven’s skepticism.

The young woman shrugged. “Fair enough, Mr. Griffin.”

As he turned to make his way to his desk and several spare parts he was working on while Raven did the welding, she called to him, “Just remember! We’re going together!”

Jake grinned. “Wouldn’t even try to stop you.”

At his desk, he glanced to a tiny port window, where the earth was softly glowing, a white blob against the vast darkness of space.

 _I’ll see you soon, kiddo,_ Jake Griffin thought. He knew it would take some time for him and Raven to finish the pod ship, but they would and then they would leave the Ark and find the one hundred teens on the ground. He wasn’t too worried about them surviving; they were all talented and capable.

And wherever Clarke was, he knew that she knew what she was doing. She was, after all, his daughter.

**

_[...] the truth is always better than not knowing._

– Agent McCall, “More Bad Than Good,” 3x14, Teen Wolf

 **


	2. II

truth ran free (closer to the edge)

*

 **McCoy** : Don’t pander to me, kid. One tiny crack in the hull, and our blood boils in thirteen seconds. Solar flare might crop up, cook us in our seats. And wait till you’re sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles. See if you’re still so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding! Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.

– _Star Trek_ (2009)

*

                Jake watched his wife with a mix of ill-fitted emotions as she stared in dismay at the large screens in front of her, watching as one-by-one, those who remained on Earth began dimming as their wrist indicators blinked off, indicating death.

                Abby banged her hands in frustration on the console. Her second, Jackson, glanced at her from his control station in concern.

                “What is going on?” Abby exclaimed, her voice tight. She had yet to notice Jake standing at the entrance. “The air _can’t_ be toxic. It just _can’t_.”

                On one hand, Jake felt for Abby. She wanted _so hard_ to believe that the Earth was sustainable so that the Ark could send people down and repopulate, ensuring their survival. She believed with all her might in this, because any other option wasn’t possible—it would mean that she voted to kill her daughter.

                Despite that, Jake couldn’t help but feel bitter as well. He knew his wife was the one who told Thelonious about his plan, not Wells like Clarke thought, and that she did so thinking she could convince him to give it up and they could find another way to make their last year or so bearable. Yet, Jake couldn’t do that. Everything he did, he did it for Clarke, his daughter – for the children of the Ark and their future. He was going to expose the flaw so that they could come together and work on a solution that ensured the survival of _everyone_ , not just those the Council thought should survive due to their skills.

                But Abby, between telling his once-best friend and not speaking up when Clarke practically shouted it at Thelonious, Shumway, and the guards, lost Jake’s respect and admiration. He once loved the girl who dreamed about saving people, about making things right. But since her appointment to the council, that girl changed to someone who thought about protecting her investments and interests first, instead of everyone.

                Jake wasn’t stupid; he knew that his beliefs were highly pacifistic, if not too moral, at times. He wanted to work with the good of many over the good of a few. He had the duality of seeing the trees within the forest and the forest itself, making him able to visualise short- and long-term issues within the Ark system. It promoted him quickly to a high-ranking position, but also provided him with access to restricted information. His best friend becoming the leader of their people also helped, as Thelonious would look the other way – many times – when Jake found himself poking about older areas of the Ark.

                Abby had done the unforgivable, though, when she voted “yes” to send the children to Earth. Maybe she believed the Earth was habitable, and that they would survive. It was entirely possible: ninety-seven years since the last nuclear bomb exploded was about how long they needed for any radiation poisoning to have dissipated in the atmosphere. In addition, when viewed from the Ark, the Earth was green and blue, indicating vegetation growth and clean, non-polluted waters. When the bombs went off, the dirt from the explosions would have thrown up into the atmosphere and covered the Earth, darkening it and preventing sunlight from passing through. There would have been a mini Ice Age, causing vegetation to die and food to become scarce. Yet, the atmosphere was clear from space down to the planet, and the amount of green and the lack of changing ice caps since Jake began viewing the Earth as a teenage indicated that things were stable.

                He could understand that Abby thought people could live on Earth.

                But he couldn’t understand how, if they weren’t one hundred percent sure, she could let their only child go when she was guilty of nothing but loving her father too much.

                And when he thought of that, he would take a deep breath and remind himself that while Clarke was apprenticing as a doctor, she was _his_ daughter. She had his stubbornness, his strength, and his want to lead and change people.

                That would help her.

                He hoped.

                Jake’s eyes scanned the screens quickly, reading the names of those who “died.” The first two, who had blinkered out, were young teens and it was upon impact with the ground, according to the shuttle timer. That, he expected.

                However, it was over three hours later when the other indicators blinked out – and only two of them, again, did so. John Murphy and John Mbege, both having been placed in the Sky Box for violent assaults on numerous people, “died” within seconds of each other. Everyone else on the ground was still alive.

                Narrowing his eyes, Jake’s gaze darted from Murphy and Mbege, to Clarke. Her heart rate was up, but steady as though she was working out. Her oxygen intake had levelled out, and overall she seemed content with whatever she was doing. A glance around the board showed that a few others shared similar traits to Clarke: Octavia Blake, Jasper Jordan, Monty Green, and Finn Collins all had accelerated heartbeats and an increase of endorphins. They were going somewhere with purpose, and Jake could only assume they were making their way to the nearest bunker for supplies, if Thelonious’s kind and helpful words could be considered such.

                Others on the screen, such as Roma Mininski, Glen Jones, Atom Evans, and even Connor Finnegan and Derek Smalls, showed that the teenagers were relaxed and their vitals were perfectly even.

                Jake knew then, in that moment, that if there was any radiation left over, it was negligible, and they could survive the Earth. Murphy and Mbege had removed their wrist communicators for some reason, wanting the Ark to think they were dead – and not to come down either. Someone else was manipulating them, wanting something very different from the Ark’s mission. And since Clarke and Wells were privy to enough classified information, it was certain that she or Wells had mentioned what the wrist communicators were for to the others on the ground.

It was time to move up his plans with Raven.

*

                Twenty-four hours.

                In less than twenty-four hours, Clarke dealt with her confusing emotions towards Wells – having spent several months thinking and hating him for trying to get her father floated until Jake revealed on a visit to her that Wells _wasn’t_ the one who told Thelonious. Clarke also dealt with the fact that instead of being able to explore her way to Mount Weather alone, she had four tagalongs; Collins flirted and flitted between her and Octavia, and Monty and Jasper were instead cataloguing all the flora and fauna they came across.

                Clarke wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t a genius, by any means, but she wasn’t stupid either. With the Earth being as clean and prosperous as it was, she was certain they were _not_ on the only humans left on the ground. The path they were on was well trodden, the vegetation not growing past the mossy, springy ground. Branches arched high overhead, but nothing dipped low to obscure their vision while walking.

                They also hadn’t come across any predatory animals. It was ludicrous to think that in ninety-seven years, the animal kingdom would not adapt or change to survive with a decimated human population. Within two weeks of no human contact, dogs became feral. After a hundred years, most buildings – the ones that were not bombed – would still exist and although nature would overcome some of them, or the majority of it, they were livable. Cars and other metal transport would be rusted through, holey and damaged beyond repair. Skyscrapers that survived the initial bombs and shockwaves would be steel skeletons, covering with climbing vines and vegetation.

                But things – and ultimately, people – would have survived. The bombs, Clarke learned in history class, struck major cities: New York, London, Berlin, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, Dublin, Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Johannesburg, Bangkok, Sydney. The Eastern Coast of the United States was hard hit; “western” Europe – all of Europe from Portugal to the Czech Republic, from Malta to Norway, was a wasteland of tightly condensed cities and burial grounds.

                The middle of Africa; the Caribbean, French Polynesia, the remote reaches of Nepal, Mongolia, and even Russia – they would have survived. She once heard a story from a written account back in the twentieth century that a fighter pilot crash landed somewhere in Russia and was taken in by a family who thought a Tsar was still in power, despite it being over seventy years since the Russian royal family’s assassination. Central America, and remote, hard-to-reach locals of Peru – like Machu Picchu, at two thousand and four hundred metres above sea level – and Brazil, too, would have been far enough away from most of the radiation, bombs, and shockwaves. Australia and New Zealand, as well as Tasmania, likely had some type of population.

                And goodness knows what happened in Central America, or those who remained behind in the South and the Appalachian area of Virginia. Clarke was sure the dropship landed them somewhere in the Southern United States, probably what was once Georgia or North Carolina. Mining communities, shanties, pop-up towns with low populations, and ghost towns filled with what people once considered backwater rednecks, nomads and migratory low income families searching for whatever jobs they could, Clarke knew better than most to be on her guard. If those survived, their descendants would be hellish, indeed.

                So, despite the violence in the spear-throwing, the spear sticking through Jasper’s chest, and his wide-eyed, pale face splattered with blood from the initial impact, Clarke absently recognised a voice in her head saying, _I told you so. I told you we aren’t alone_.

                Damned if she was letting Jasper die on his own though – no one deserved that. The least they could do was bring his body back to the ship for a proper burial.

                Which led her to glaring at Bellamy Blake, the young man who snuck aboard the dropship so his sister wouldn’t be alone.

                Clarke admired him for that. Loyalty, familial or any other kind was something she admired and appreciated. Goodness knows she exhibited it when she claimed her father’s research for her own to save his life; Bellamy was doing the same. But what she couldn’t quite figure out was his insistence on removing the wristbands just yet – or why he wanted to leave Jasper for dead.

                So she tried a different tactic, drawing him closer to her as she spoke, and slightly away from his shadow – that creepy Murphy kid – and the crowd that was watching them.

                “Why do you want to leave Jasper behind so much?” asked Clarke, tilting her head to the side, considering the much taller man.

                “Why do you want to save him so much?” taunted Bellamy, throwing her words back at her. He had a tiny smirk on his face, his eyes hooded and shadowed as he kept his chin lowered – not just because Clarke was ridiculously shorter than him, but because it gave him a dominant, predatory aura.

                “If we’re not alone,” began Clarke carefully, keeping her tone light on ‘if’ because damnit, it was obvious they _weren’t_ alone, “Then we need all the people we can to survive and fight and live.”

                Bellamy frowned, a tiny bit, as though he was contemplating her words.

                “What? Are you actually going to believe the rich bitch?” broke in Murphy with a sardonic scoff in her direction. “Leave the kid to die. He was stupid enough to get hurt so he can deal with it.”

                Clarke rolled her eyes. “As the only person here with _any_ type of medical experience, I’ll keep that in mind the next time you get a boo-boo, Murphy.”

                The teen in question deepened his scowl and took a threatening step forward. “ _What_ did you just say, bitch?”

                From her peripheral, Clarke spotted Monroe and the teen that was in the seat next to her watching. Both seemed to be enjoying her verbal smack down, but Clarke needed them to spread why she was in lockup without her actually _doing_ anything to facilitate her reputation. As far as anyone here knew, she was the daughter of a Council member – a dangerous thing that Wells already learned as Murphy and Mbege threatened him with poor grammar – and the daughter of a chief engineer. She was as good as royalty, and Collins and Blake’s use of “Princess” certainly hadn’t helped.

                Maybe it was time for them to wonder what she did to lock her up, even if she was one of the “good guys.”

                Clarke angled her head, schooling her features as best as she could to make it look like she didn’t care about Murphy. “I’m sorry; did you hit your head on landing? I thought I made it clear.”

She dismissed him by turning her back, slowly and deliberately, and turning to face Bellamy, who had been watching with ill-concealed amusement. Bellamy’s eyes locked on Clarke but quickly darted behind her, as Murphy sputtered and gapped. A glare halted Murphy from doing anything, and Clarke was inwardly ridiculously happy that Bellamy acted.

                “Jasper and Monty were both locked up for recreational drug use. They’re useful and resourceful,” she said, speaking very clearly only to Bellamy, who seemed to have become the leader of those on the ground. “Everyone here was locked up for a reason and some of us are more dangerous than others. Just like some of us are more _important_ in terms of survival than others. Jasper is one of those. If anything, if he is dead”—she forged past Monty’s intake of air—“then he deserves to be buried with his people. Even if we’re a mismatched band of them.”

                Bellamy was wavering; she could see it. She took a step closer, getting up close into his personal space, and lowered her voice. “Right now, they’re all watching us. Watching you. Waiting to see what you say... and Bellamy? Right now, they’re thinking only _one_ of us is scared.”

                Clarke’s voice dropped lower. “C’mon. You’ve got a gun. Show everyone want you’re willing to do for one of them. How far you’re willing to go for someone who isn’t your sister. Show everyone who you really are.”

                The young man’s eyes had darkened and his pupils were blown – whether by Clarke’s closeness or some other reason she didn’t want to think about at the moment – but Clarke knew she had him.

                Having said her piece, Clarke took a step back, then another, and another until there was a good distance between them. She turned around and began walking in the direction she had come from, clearly stating her intentions.

                She heard a noise of frustration, and then:

                “Octavia, you’re staying here.”

                “What? _No_!”

                “You’re hurt. Atom, watch her. Murphy, you’re coming with us.”

                “You’re not going alone with her,” and then Clarke rolled her eyes. There it was – he had picked. Collins decided that Octavia wasn’t worth the time and effort with Bellamy watching her every move, so he picked Clarke.

                She wanted to groan. She was sure he was a good person, really, but his sense of timing was _awful_.

                Footsteps caught up with her, and a quick glance behind saw Bellamy was matching her stride.

                “What were you locked up for, anyway, Princess?” he asked, loudly enough as they walked away from the makeshift camp.

                Clarke shrugged, eyes forward, but a small grin crept on her face as she heard from behind them, back at camp, Monroe shouting.

                “Watch your back, Blake! She was in the Box for treason and you don’t want to be her next target!”

                Clarke could have kissed the girl when she spied the stupefied look on Bellamy’s face.

*

                Raven kept glancing curiously over at Jake from her spot into the pod ship, where she was fiddling with the final wiring. The older man hunched over his makeshift desk in the far corner of the abandoned B-station, near a port window that every six hours, overlooked the Earth. He scribbled some more on several pieces of loose paper, of all different sizes, mumbling to himself under his breath as he did so.

                Slightly irritated, Raven huffed and strode over, looking over his shoulder. Some of the larger pieces of paper were schematics and blueprint designs for parts of the Ark, while others were long, neatly written notes.

                “What are you writing?” she finally asked, curiosity tingeing her tone.

                “Records,” replied Jake absently, sucking on the end of his pen. He tapped a few things into his datapad, then glanced back at a sheet to cross-reference what he just wrote.

                “On what?”

                “On what we’ve been doing.”

                “Why? So they can kill us when they’re on the ground, too?”

                Raven wanted to roll her eyes. The fact that they were escaping the Ark, leaving everyone else on board to suffer wasn’t beyond her – but her boyfriend was her priority, especially after she learned what happened to those in the Sky Box via her eavesdropping.

                Jake rolled his eyes, finally glancing up at Raven. “They’re not going to kill us.” He glanced back at his paper, a twisted look on his face. “It’s unlikely they’ll even get to the Earth.”

                “Whoa, wait, what?” Raven stood straight. “What do you mean?”

                Jake sighed, leaning back in his seat and running a hand through his scraggily blond hair. “There are only three other dropships, Raven. Each can, if retro fitted properly and stripped bare, hold maybe three hundred people. There are over two thousand left on the Ark, and the dropships can only take nine hundred of that two thousand. The majority of people will still die onboard.”

                Raven was quiet. “So nothing will change, then?”

                “I don’t know,” admitted Jake quietly. “There are _some_ options, like the Ark itself. Each station was a smaller unit from each of the twelve that came together to create the Ark in the first place. They got up to space, and they have the capabilities to go back down to Earth. But those systems are hundreds of years old, and truthfully, poorly maintained.”

                “But it’s possible,” argued Raven, quietly but desperately fierce.

                Jake nodded slowly. “Possible. Guaranteed? Not at all.”

                Raven then jerked her chin at his papers. “So what’s that got to do with what you’ve just said?”

                Jake pointed and then tapped the papers with his finger. “These are my calculations needed to convert the stations back into individual ships. And how to maximise space on the dropships while sacrificing certain necessities to ensure more people can safely fit.”

                “You’re leaving it behind for the Council to find. So they can use it,” blinked Raven. “Even when we’re gone, you’re going to try to help them.”

                “I couldn’t just let them die, Raven,” quietly said Jake, his blue eyes turned to her as he spoke softly. “I promised Clarke that I’d try everything I could to save everyone. That’s what I’m trying to do. But there’s only so much I _can_ actually do from this end. I need to know what the ground is like, to calculate trajectory; I need to know what the habitat is like to know which resources to leave behind because they’re not needed. I can’t speculate from space.”

                “So you’d rather hit the ground and die there than in space?” Raven gave a tiny smile. “Go bold or die trying.”

                Jake returned her smile. “In a sense, yes. Dying in space is either relatively quick, or painful, or both. Burning alive entering the atmosphere, freezing to death in two minutes in the frigidly of space; how about lack of air and suffocating? There’s numerous ways to die up here, all which we know – but dying of radiation? Of poison? Getting speared by an animal? That’s different.”

                “If you say, ‘that’s exciting,’ I may just hurt you,” teased Raven, moving away from the table. She had wiring to finish.

                “Well, it would be novel. Think of all the things we’re missing out up here,” responded Jake, watching her walk away. “By the way, how’s that looking?”

                “Good,” replied Raven, mumbling through the gloves she placed between her teeth as she prodded at the wires for a quick look.

                “What’s ‘good’?”

                “Like, ‘less than twenty four hours good’,” replied Raven, spitting out the gloves.

                Jake frowned, glancing at his window. “We only have one window to meet, once per day if we want to land anywhere near the dropship.”

                “How far away is it?”

                “Maybe fourteen hours, give or take,” Jake sighed, closing his eyes tiredly. “If it’s not ready then, it’ll have to be the next day.”

                “It’ll be done, Mr. G, don’t worry about it,” answered Raven with confidence. “I’m the best Zero-G mechanic around here. Between you and me, we’ve got all the parts we needed and we corrected most mechanical issues in the podship. I’m just upping our chances from sixty percent, to ninety with my fiddling.”

                Jake smiled at the younger girl, and her tenacious determination. “That’s good to know. I’m going to go back to the apartment and rest there for a bit. You going to be okay?”

                “Peachy. Get going, Mr. Griffin. I’ll be here.”

                Jake left B-station, doing his best to seem like he was supposed to be there – a trick he learned young: walk with purpose and no one bothers you – and began making his way back up to the communications station where the control room and monitoring for the one hundred delinquents was. He wanted to keep a keen eye on the stats before his and Raven’s descent.

                He was nearly there was a figure dashed around the corner, skidding past a couple walking ahead of Jake and nearly careening into them. The young man shouted an apology, only coming up short and panting as he stopped in front of Jake.

                “Mr. Griffin,” the man gasped, hunched over, hands on his knees as he took in air. When he looked up, Jake recognised him.

                “Jackson,” he greeted, surprised. His eyebrows reached his hairline. “What’s wrong?”

                “It’s Abby,” wheezed Jackson. “Kane arrested her for using more than that lawful amount of supplied blood to save Councilman Jaha when he was shot. He’s going to float her.”

                Jake felt his heart drop to the floor. Fear crept through him, an icy grip that numbed and froze him. Then just as quickly, the blood rushed back into his head, and he swayed, dizzily. But his mind was clear.

                He didn’t bother saying anything to Jackson as he left him gasping in the corridor. Instead, Jake arrived at the lower levels of the Ark in record time, having used every nook and cranny he knew from his engineering days to cut corners and use as shortcuts. He arrived just as Abby turned away from Kane, stepping towards the containment chamber.

                “Abby!”

                Abby stopped, turning back. Marcus Kane, as well, turned in surprise. The guards stationed nearby shifted uneasily on their feet.

                “Jake,” said Abby, in surprise.

                “What’s going on here?” he demanded, spinning on his heel to face Kane and demand an answer from him. Just because he was second-in-command to Jaha did _not_ mean he could decide someone’s fate on his whim.

                “Dr. Griffin used over the allotted amount of blood for patients,” replied Kane in a very even tone. It was clear he was trying to be as diplomatic as possible. “As such, she committed a crime – one that our laws specific clearly the consequences for, Mr. Griffin.”

                Jake grit his teeth and ground them together, steeling his jaw. “Her being executed lies only within Thelonious’ power. You can’t make that call.”

                “Councilman Jaha was shot, Mr. Griffin,” replied Kane evenly. “We don’t know whether or not he will survive and as such, I am in the position to make the tough calls until we know one way or another.”

                Jake barely stopped himself from snorting in derision. “You’ve always wanted power, Kane, but could you handle it?” He shook his head. “You can’t float her. You know you can’t.”

                “As acting Councilman, I think you can find that I _can_ ,” responded Kane coolly, giving a jerk of a nod to the guards.

                They grabbed Abby by the upper arms and began dragging her back to the containment chamber.

                “Stop! Stop it!” she ripped her arms from their hands and squared her shoulders, glaring at the guards as she did so. Her brown-eyes gazed onto her husband, and softened. “It’s okay, Jake. I know what I was doing. I did what I thought was right. I accept the consequences of my actions.”

                Jake swallowed heavily and watched as his wife turned her back on everyone and walked steadily into the containment chamber, where she turned to face everyone, looking at them head-on, forcing them to watch and acknowledge her death.

                “Abby,” whispered Jake, taking an unconscious step forward and swallowing heavily. Despite whatever problems they had personally, she was still his wife and his partner. He couldn’t _not_ acknowledge her or her actions. She was the mother of his child, doing what she thought best.

                Abby gave a watery smile, brushing her long brown hair from over her shoulders to hanging behind them, and then clasped her hands at her front.

                Kane stood stoically, but Jake could see his waver as he realised how much control he truly had, sentencing someone to death. In his hesitation, he dragged on both Abby and Jake’s nerves.

                Finally, he seemed to steel his nerves, straightening his mouth into a tight line. He didn’t give the guards any orders; instead, he walked to the containment chamber button, which would open the far doors into space, and hovered his hand over it.

                He looked at Abby, then Jake – and it was all at once an apology, a plea for forgiveness, a cry for help for a task he never wanted to have, a realisation that with the power of being Councilman, it meant life or death – and then he glanced back at Abby and murmured, quietly, “I’m so sorry.”

                He closed his eyes, turned away from the containment chamber, and rose his hand higher to get a good _smack_ on the button.

                “ _Stop this immediately!_ ”

                Kane jerked back, turning to face Thelonious Jaha, who was barely standing, a hand clutching his wide where the bullet entered, pressing down as blood trickled through his thick bandages.

                “Let her out,” he commanded, and the guards hovered hesitantly, causing Jaha to bark, “ _Now!_ ”

                The containment door slid open and Abby walked through, her eyes darting from Jaha, to her best friend Callie, to her husband. She paused, briefly, at Jaha’s side to whisper, “Thank you,” before she was in her husband’s arms, Jake clutching her tightly.

                And in that moment, everything was fine.

*

                “Seriously. What. The Fuck.”

                Clarke agreed with the sentiment, but didn’t voice her shared opinion with Murphy on the principle that it was _Muprhy_ who voiced the thought.

                Three arguments later (one about Finn’s abilities as a tracker; then one on Wells’ abilities as a tracker; and then the third and final one between Clarke and Bellamy about her wristband, which resulted in the very cliché used of Clarke saying, “over my dead body,” and Bellamy furthering the cliché by retorting, “that can be arranged, Princess.”), two dead ends, and one circular back track, Clarke and Wells finally heard Jasper’s moans of pain. Together, the group of five crashed through the brush and dirt until they arrived at clearing, only to spot Jasper practically crucified to a tree, a poultice on his upper chest where the spear had pierced him.

                Which led to Murphy blandly saying, “What. The Fuck.”

                Twice, in case they missed him the first time.

                “Murphy, Collins, get him down,” ordered Bellamy, while Clarke took a step forward, a frown on her face as she did so. Bellamy followed behind, grasping her upper arm and yanking her back. “You – Princess – watch where you’re stepping.”

                Clarke rolled her eyes, looking at the ground and the surrounding area until she found a large enough branch from a snapped tree. She picked it up and began gingerly poking the area in front of her. “Is this good enough for you, Captain Blake?”

                Bellamy gave Clarke a rather chilly glare in response, but did not speak. Instead, he followed her steps as the moved forward, step by step.

                “Seems okay,” muttered Clarke, eyes on the ground. “They got him up there, so...”

                “So it’s a trap,” replied Murphy, from the other side of the tree and clearing, where he and Finn had copied her by grabbing branches and taking tentative steps forward towards Jasper. Wells remained behind Clarke and Bellamy by a fair distance.

                Finn scoffed. “A trap for who? And if it’s a trap, why would they heal him?”

                “They didn’t heal him,” contradicted Clarke, prodding a squishy bit of ground harder. “They helped him, but that doesn’t mean he’s healed.”

                “So if he’s been helped but healed, he’s still bait,” added Bellamy from behind.

                “Bait for who?” asked Murphy, slowly as the already knew the answer.

                Clarke’s eyes rose and she met Finn’s from across the tree, both wearing grim looks. It happened so quickly, Clarke wasn’t sure what quite happened – she kept her eyes up and didn’t prod her branch hard enough for her next step, and all of a sudden, she was looking up at the blue sky and plummeting down.

                A sharp yank on her right arm and a bruising grip on her wrist had Clarke glancing up as she heard Wells and Finn shout. Bellamy had both hands wrapped around Clarke’s wrist, crouched on the ground as he held her up. A glance below saw the remains of a skeleton with a spike protruding from its ribs.

                Clarke inwardly sighed. _Thank God for Bellamy Blake_ , she thought, glancing back up only to feel her heart freeze in panic as she saw him contemplatively eyeing her wristband.

                His brown eyes then lazily travelled to her, searching them for something. The words that they had spat at each other not more than an hour ago caused a shiver to pass through Clarke.

                _I want that wristband, Princess._

_And the only way you’re ever gonna get it, is over my dead body._

_... That could be arranged, Princess._

                But then Bellamy was pulling her up and Wells grabbed her under her armpits and yanked her up and the whole thing took no longer than twenty-thirty seconds at most. Wells pulled and Clarke landed awkwardly half on the ground and half on his lap, staring at Bellamy in surprise and wariness; he stared back at her, unreadable.

                “What the fuck is that?” Murphy was shouting in an increasing panic as he and Finn appeared beside the others.

                “Booby trap,” muttered Wells, eyeing the completely collapsed top soil with disgust. The trap exposed a deeply dug trench around the tree, with heavy wooden spikes dotting the trench from below. Several skeletons littered the spikes, indicating that they were hardly the first – and likely, not the last – to fall prey.

                “A trap is designed to contain someone, to lure them in,” said Bellamy quietly, from his spot on the ground. “ _That_ is not a trap. That is designed to kill.”

                Clarke agreed. Whoever designed the trench did so with the intention of placing Jasper there because they thought his people would want to recover him – but in doing so, would kill themselves, or seriously maim themselves, in the process. It was a quick way to kill as many of their enemies as possible in the shortest amount of time.

                “They’re not dumb,” agreed Clarke, just as quietly. “And they’re likely re-evaluating what we can do after this.”

                “You think they’re _here_?” asked Finn in surprise, his eyes wide. Beside him, Murphy jerked and began frantically to scan the tree line.

                Bellamy got to his feet quickly, with Wells and Clarke scrambling behind him as well. The older man reached behind for his gun and clicked the safety off.

                “Let’s get the kid out of the tree, first,” he said. “Spacewalker, Jaha Junior, go. Murphy and I will watch. Princess, best go with them to see how the kid is doing.”

                Clarke scowled but went with Wells and Finn, watching with wary eyes as they began to hesitantly climb the dead tree, their eyes constantly roving and looking back at the exposed trench in case they lost their balance.

                It took some time to retrieve Jasper. His wrists were tied with rough bark to the tree’s limbs, and they had nearly cut off his circulation; his legs were tied as well, with another thick strap around his middle to hold him in place to the tree.

                Getting him down was trickier, and Clarke ended up calling for Murphy and Bellamy to help, which they reluctantly did so.

                Once Jasper was on the ground, hanging between Wells and Finn, Bellamy barked, “Let’s go,” and the group made their way carefully around the exposed trench and back the way they came, with Bellamy leading them to camp and Murphy at the rear.

                Clarke sped her pace up so she stood beside Bellamy, and quietly, said, “Thank you.”

                “For what, Princess?” asked Bellamy, keeping his eyes focused ahead of them.

                Clarke suppressed a smile. “For saving my life? For coming along to find Jasper? For showing me you’re not as big as a dick as I thought?”

                At the last, Bellamy glared at Clarke. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t do it for your thanks.”

                “I know,” replied Clarke, evenly. She turned her gaze forward. “I just wanted to say thanks to show my appreciation. That’s all.”

                “Fine.”

                They were silent a bit longer, trying to move quickly but quietly with Jasper moaning at every bump and quick turn Wells and Finn made. Finally, Clarke heard Bellamy say, very lowly she almost missed it, “You’re welcome, Princess.”

                She smiled.

*

                At camp, their arrival with Jasper created panic. Immediately, people were wondering who hurt him, and spying the large circular wound on his chest, how strong and powerful these people were. Bellamy had Wells and Finn help Jasper into the dropship, Clarke, Octavia and Monty on their heels, while he and Murphy corralled those outside and he did his best to calm them down.

                Clarke, however, was focused on Jasper. After brushing off the poultice on his wound, she saw the ugly, hot red mark and quickly realised it was infected by prodding it and seeing yellow pus ooze from the corners.

                “What do we do?” whispered Octavia, her eyes locked on Jasper’s pale form.

                “Clean the wound. Flush out the infection. Fight the fever,” recited Clarke mechanically, her mind racing from one option before discarding it, only to do the same to the next.

                “What do you need?” Monty asked.

                “Water. Boiled, and strips of cloth,” Clarke instructed, and Finn and Monty raced off to do so. “I need something similar to salt, to pack the wound. Or something like aloe.”

                “We passed that stream on the way to find him. The red one – that seaweed should help,” offered Wells.

                Clarke shot him a look.

                “Hey, who passed Earth Skills with flying colours?” Wells flashed a shaky smile. “That wasn’t _you_ , Clarke.”

                Clarke sighed, and nodded. “It’s too late to find it now, but we can go looking tomorrow.”

                Octavia was gently brushing the hair off Jasper’s forehead when she asked, “What can we do now?”

                Clarke used the back of her wrist to brush her own hair off her forehead, looking up at Octavia. “Now? You’re going to help hold him down while I find a knife.”

                “A knife?” gapped Octavia. “What for?”

                Clarke traced the circle of his wound with her finger in the air, above it. “I’m going to cut off the infected flesh and to help it grow back healthy skin instead. I’ll need the knife for that.”

                “Is it best to do that now, or wait for the seaweed?” cautioned Wells, crouching next to Clarke and speaking quietly to her.

                Clarke rubbed at her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Wells. I don’t want to wait, but...”

                “Eight hours, Clarke. If it gets bad tonight, then do it. But let’s just wait for now,” whispered Wells, reaching forward and gently wrapping his hand around her wrist and bringing it down from her eyes.

                “Okay,” she agreed, looking at him. “First light; go get the seaweed.”

                “Yes, mom,” he teased, flashing a brilliantly white grin, and moving away.

                Monty and Finn returned with the items she requested, and Clarke showed them how to wipe off the poultice, replacing it was warm water and cleaning debris from under the jagged and torn skin. Monty was terribly green throughout the process, but worry for his friend kept him at Jasper’s side. Octavia, too, remained even if she was slightly squeamish, but Finn retreated with Wells.

                After cleaning the wound, rinsing it with boiled cloths and warm water, Clarke said, “All we can do is wait, now.”

                The group settled in the dropship for the evening, finding somewhere to sleep. Clarke, needing air, left and took a deep breath when she stepped outside.

                While she was inside with Jasper, Bellamy had apparently gone back out into the forest and returned with some type of meat. A line towards Murphy and Mbege had kids offering their wristbands for food.

                Clarke rolled her eyes, stalking up to the branches speared into the ground with meat on the ends like a strange kabob, and yanking one from the ground for herself.

                “Whoa, hey, now Princess,” said Murphy, seeing her from the corner of his eye. “You can’t just take dinner without payment.” His eyes darted to her wristband significantly.

                “I think you’ll find that I can,” replied Clarke coolly, aware of eyes on them.

                “I don’t make the rules, Princess,” responded Murphy, just as cool. “I just enforce them.”

                “Oh?” Clarke voiced, turning her head to see Bellamy resting on a soft knoll with two girls on either side of him, watching intently. Her voice rose. “I’m hungry, so I’m getting something to eat. After all, it’s whatever the hell I want, right?”

                 With a saucy grin, she turned from Murphy, who looked half-exasperated, half-apocalyptic, and Bellamy, who looked frustrated by her lack of falling in line. Clarke didn’t care; she knew she was useful and that no one would say anything against her – not yet at least – since Monroe helpfully let everyone know she was in the Sky Box for treason.

                She walked past the line for food, and heard the whispers as she passed.

                _She was in for treason._

_Who did she kill, I wonder?_

_Do you think she discovered something and they wanted to silence her?_

_I overheard Finn Collins saying she was in solitary. You don’t put someone nice and kind in solitary. That’s where they put the most dangerous._

_She’s so bad ass. Did you see her stand up against Murphy?_

_Second time, today!_

Settling near the dropship and half in the dark, far from the fire, Clarke sank her teeth into the tough meat and yanked, chewing it with hard bites.

                “You’re making a fuss,” said a girl, dropping next to Clarke. She recognised Monroe by the wary grin and braided hair.

                “Didn’t mean to,” answered Clarke around the food in her mouth. “Just want to get things done.”

                Monroe rolled her eyes. “By steamrolling over Blake and Murphy? You’ve either got a death wish, Clarke, or you’re one tough bitch.”

                Clarke swallowed her bite, giving Monroe a tentative grin. “Thanks, I think?”

                The other girl laughed. “You’re not bad, Griffin. Not at all.” She nodded conspiringly to another boy sitting near the fire with a group of others, one with a beanie and another girl with red hair. “Jonesdoesn’t think you’re too bad, either.”

                “Jones?”

                “He was the one sitting beside you in the dropship,” confided Monroe. “While we both think Blake’s all about the fun and screwing the Ark over – which I agree with, don’t mistake me,” she held up her bare wrist to emphasise, “—but both Jones and I think you’re in the right when it comes to survival. And you didn’t leave that kid behind. Blake would’ve. Now we know you’ll go after anyone who gets hurt.”

                “I did it because it was the right thing to do,” replied Clarke. “Not because I’m... _challenging_ Bellamy or anything.”

                Monroe grinned. “Oh, I know. But – you know – if you ever did? Challenge him, I mean? You’d have support.”

                “Ummm...”

                Monroe laughed, nudging Clarke with her shoulder. “Relax, Griffin! God, you privileged kids never got up to much, did you?”

                “Our definition of ‘trouble’ is probably different to yours,” agreed Clarke wryly, finishing her meat stick.

                “Oh?”

                “Wells once dared me to sneak a drink from the ceremonial wine at the Ark tree,” admitted Clarke. “I may have drank too much of it. Mrs. Kane wasn’t too happy the next day for service.”

                Monroe’s eyes practically sparkled.

                “We went junk surfing, once,” continued Clarke, looking up at the star-lit sky, lost in memory. “Snuck down into the garbage chute, looking for material to make a scarf for my dad and almost got caught and floated.”

                Clarke turned her head to look at Monroe, who was watching her intently. “I’m not saying we were any different than anyone else on the Ark, Monroe. We all did stupid things, and trouble was trouble, no matter what the offense was because we all ended up in the same place. But don’t pin me as this rich girl rebel, because I’m not. I did well in school and wanted to please my parents. I never spoke back to anyone in my life.”

                “But you ended up with us. In the Sky Box, I mean,” said Monroe, frowning slightly. “You were in solitary?”

                Clarke hummed her agreement. “I was.”

                “So you _did_ do something. Something treasonous,” prodded Monroe.

                Clarke brushed the charcoal and grease from the meat on her stained trousers and stood, looking down at Monroe.

                “The thing about me, Monroe,” began Clarke, carefully thinking and picking her words, “Is that I like to help people. I always have, and always will. That’s why I went after Jasper. It’s why I want to survive down here, regardless to what Bellamy says. I’m not doing this to be a shit disturber – I’m doing this because this is _me_. I’m trying to do the right thing by everyone, even Bellamy and Murphy and Mbege and you and John and Jasper and everyone else.

                “And my helping people?” she gave a tiny laugh. “Well, I guess you can say I wanted to help people that the Council didn’t, and what I knew would have destroyed them all. That’s why I was in the Sky Box. Because I was trying to do the right thing.”

                She then turned and walked away, back into the dropship to check on Jasper. Only Monty and Octavia were awake, watching Jasper’s chest rise and fall, wincing as the movement made tiny moans escape his mouth.

                Clarke settled near Jasper, on the other side Octavia wasn’t on, and crossed her arms over her chest. She wasn’t just going to stop helping people – she was going to save Jasper. Because that’s what she did, and failing wasn’t an option.

*

 **Allison** : I’m not… Fearless. I’m terrified. I’m _always_ terrified. I act like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t. I don’t know if Isaac is dying right now. I don’t know if I made a mistake with Scott. I don’t know what my dad is thinking. I don’t know if we should trust Derek. I don’t know…  _I don’t know anything_.

–  _Teen Wolf_ , 3x21, “The Fox and the Wolf”

**

TBC...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts about surviving an apocalypse and about nature comes from the History channel's 2009 TV show, "Life After Humans," which shows in increments of 1 week/2 weeks/1 month/1 year/5 years/10 years/50 years/100+ years how nature and animals react without humans in their lives and if we just suddenly disappeared. You can Google it and find episodes to watch online for free.
> 
> Now not a one-shot. But PhD classes start tomorrow, plus TAing so we'll see how things go with updates.


	3. III

*

**Matt Murdock** : “War changes people. Sometimes they see things they can't unsee. Come home to find home's not there anymore. It changed. Or maybe they did.”

\- “New York’s Finest,” _Daredevil_ season 2, episode 3

**

            The following morning had Clarke and Wells up at dawn, a steamy mist rolling across the forest floor with the sun barely edging over the horizon. They had packed some berries everyone decided was safe for consumption, and were going to split a canister between them when they found somewhere with clean, free-flowing water.

            There was one, tiny obstacle in their way, though.

            Bellamy wasn’t exactly happy at Clarke’s rebellious quips, as much as some amused him. He wanted everyone to know he was the leader, the one the 100 should turn to, but already there were some voices of dissidence amongst them thanks to Clarke’s reputation making itself known and her acts of defiance.

            He needed someone “in” with them, able to watch their every move and act against Clarke if necessary. That led to him and Clarke having a massive go at each other, waking the majority of the camp not yet up, and scattering some birds in nearby trees due to their loudness.

            “NO!”

            “I said _yes_ ,” replied Bellamy evenly, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows.

            Clarke mimicked him, crossing her arms, eyes flashing in anger. “And I said _no_.”

            “He’s going with you.”

            “No, he’s not.”

            “Yes, _he is_.”

            “Uh, guys?” broke in Monty, glancing back and forth between the two arguing leaders of the delinquent teenagers on Earth.

            “WHAT?” both practically snarled, turning and facing him in one, shared motion. Monty quailed back, stepping back physically and nearly bumping into Octavia who stood just behind him. The younger girl was scowling, her arms crossed as her eyes darted from Clarke to Bellamy and back.

            “Are we leaving to get the seaweed to help Jasper or what?” braved Monty, eyes darting back and forth. His best friends’ life was on the line, and he wasn’t about to lose any ground.

            Clarke sighed. “I wanted to leave with Wells earlier this morning, but someone”—here, she rolled her eyes in Bellamy’s direction—“doesn’t want me to go without Murphy. Seems to think _poor_ , _little_ me is going to get hurt.”

            “It’s in your best interest,” argued back Bellamy, frowning sternly at Clarke. “We’ve already seen that whoever else is here is willing to hurt us – permanently –, so you going with security is hardly an issue.”

            “I’m not complaining about the security,” replied Clarke through gritted teeth, “I’m complaining about the choice of company.”

            Murphy, several paces behind Bellamy and with his right hand gently resting on the hand grip of the pistol he had tucked into his waistband, deadpanned, “ _thanks_.”

            “Non-negotiable,” argued back Bellamy. “I need to stay here this afternoon and search out more food with Atom, Mbege, and Diggs. You need someone watching your backs in case some more of those... _things_ show up and try spearing you.”

            Clarke ground her teeth – hearing her mother’s voice as she did so: _you’re going to grind those molars down to nothing, Clarke!_ – before finally giving a terse nod. “But he doesn’t give lip. He gives lip and I shoot him myself. And I carry the gun.”

            There was a spark of amusement in Bellamy’s dark eyes, lightening them slightly into a warm amber. “You know how to shoot a gun?”

            Clarke shrugged. “Can’t be that hard: point and shoot?”

            She saw the twitch but was still unprepared for Bellamy to let out a loud, short guffaw that he immediately tried to muffle by schooling his features back into his customary scowl. He wasn’t nearly as successful as he thought, because Clarke saw Octavia’s beaming face behind her brother, as well as Murphy’s stupefied look; even Monty, Finn and Wells, nearby, were a bit shocked at the stoic man’s burst of humanity.

            “Stick to scalpels,” offered Bellamy finally, shaking his head. “Murphy won’t be a problem.” He turned to face the younger man. “Will he?”

            Murphy quickly shook his head and moved forward to stand near Clarke, who sighed in submission. Although she had no love for Murphy, she couldn’t deny that his cruelty could come in handy, if needed.

            “Right,” she said, turning to Wells. “Do you remember where the seaweed was?”

            “I think so,” nodded her best friend, a pensive look on his face.

            Murphy snorted. “You _think_ so? Do you know or not?”

            Wells scowled at the other teen, a dark look crossing his face. “I have a good idea where it was, but given that we were on our way to find Jasper at the time, I was a bit preoccupied.”

            Murphy snorted and Clarke sighed, resisting the urge to pinch her nose as a headache began to bloom right behind her eyes.

            “Let’s just go,” she muttered, pushing her way past Wells’ shoulder, catching Monty’s eyes as she did so. She clearly expressed a message to him: _do you want to come?_

            Monty shook his head, much rather preferring to stay with his friend and Octavia.

            With another sigh, Clarke nodded in response and began the trek past the broken wing of the spaceship, with Murphy and Wells bickering behind her. She hated Bellamy Blake a little more than usual for fostering the two on her, but – but – at the same time, she was kind of glad she had them, and the gun, with them.

            Just as the left, she heard Bellamy shout out, “Right then. Now, has anyone seen Trina and Pascal?”

**

            It wasn’t easy, theoretically living a double life, thought Jake Griffin, as he left the hanger and Raven with the finishing touches on their drop ship. He wanted to leave the schematics he drew up on the larger ships for those left behind to use, as well as the plans for turning the stations back into their original ships for re-entry. He couldn’t just leave them in a lurch, especially when he was Chief Engineer.

            Back in the Griffin living quarters, he moved directly to his shared bedroom with his wife, even if he hadn’t been using it recently. Jake was under no illusions that he had the perfect marriage, or that things would be magically solved now that he was – rightly – running away from his wife and the Ark. However, Abby was still family, as was Clarke, and he had to choose where he could be best served for the good of the entire Ark and those on the ground.

            _What should I bring_? He wondered, looking around the sparse bedroom. Materialistic items of value were few and far in-between, usually things passed down as heritage or heirloom pieces from the first families who boarded the original stations from their original countries. Jake himself owned a rather nice Rolex from his great-grandfather. It had long stopped working, the parts too rusty or dirty to continue the turning of the interior gears, but it was still a nice piece that he planned on giving Clarke when he next saw her.

            Clarke’s fascination with art made their living quarters unique though: she drew on almost anything when given the chance, and as such, above the bed nook, there was a large mural of an alien galaxy, swirls and whorls of stars dancing through asteroid belts and planetary rings. Still – it wasn’t something he could bring to Earth.

            In Clarke’s room, he found a few near-nub pencils, one or two charcoal pieces, and three paint brushes in a case with dried, cracked water-based paint circles. Stuffed between the mattress of her narrow bed and the frame attached to the wall of the unit, Jake found a small, nearly empty art book; it was one of the things he managed to barter off from Nygel for Clarke’s sixteenth birthday. She wanted to finish the last art book she had, and hadn’t had a chance to begin this one before she was taken into solitary. He pocketed the book into a worn leather satchel at his side.

            As he moved through the quarters, Jake felt a sudden sweeping sensation in his stomach, grimacing as he recognised the feeling. This was all he had ever known – and he was willing to leave it on a whim?

            _Not a whim_ , he told himself firmly. _For the future. For Clarke._

            Sadness weighed heavily, sitting low in his belly. But there was a coil of something else, something that stirred his nerves and made everything to the tips of his fingers tingle with anticipation.

            It was excitement.

            Jake knew people thought Abby was the brave, adventurous one; she did, after all, become a doctor, working hard to save people should the need arise on the Ark. But Chief Engineer? That required intelligence, innovation and creativity, and a helluva lot of stubbornness. Once you make something, build it, you won’t know if it will work unless someone tries it – and being that first test subject on a stagnant and dying space station with a limited body count? It meant that someone had to bite the bullet, so to speak, and become the test subject. That required bravery.

            Jake finished his perusal of the Griffin household, a lingering gaze on his work desk, tucked into a small corner of the living area. Clarke had stood there, just over a year ago, watching him finish recording his message to the people of the Ark, and had instead claimed _she_ was the one who was going to let everyone know, not him. The tablet was lost, sliding behind the desk in the aftermath of the confusion, and Jake never retrieved it.

            Until now.

            The desk itself was bolted directly into the linoleum siding, biting into steel posts in the walls. There was no way to move the desk, but it was possible he could slide underneath and reach around the back opening.

            Jake slid the chair away, a metal, horribly uncomfortable thing, and then belly crawled under the desk.

            _I’m going on a diet when I get to earth,_ he thought sourly as the slight pouch of his stomach made the crawl awkward.

            He inched forward, slowly looking left and right and trying not to sneeze with the dust, finally reaching as far towards the back as he could. Angling himself, he squinted in the dimness of the bottom side of the desk and through the opening at the back, and spotted a darker tint of black: the tablet.

            Of course, it was at an awkward angle, and being a thin slice of technology from a time long ago, it was the perfect size to slide behind the desk and fit in the tiny gap between desk and wall. Getting it out would not be easy.

            He stretched his fingertips towards the opening, briefly touching upon the tablet and shifting it, but it slid back into place. He moved forward, inching further into the cramped space, and tried again. This time, his fingertips caught the edge of the tablet, and shifted it briefly in his direction before sliding back into its original place.

            Jack huffed in annoyance, stretching and wriggling his fingers some more.

            A knock on the living quarters door startled him. His head shot up and he banged his head against the underside of the desk.

            “Shit!” he cursed, turning to face the entryway.

            “Jake? Mr. Griffin?” called a voice. Jake rolled his eyes, recognizing Abby’s protégé, Jackson.

            “One minute, Jackson!” he called back, hoping it would distract the young man enough. He stretched his fingers and caught the edge of the tablet, the stickiness on his fingers catching the smooth plastic edge and tipping the tablet slowly in the direction of the opening behind the desk.

            “Mr. Griffin, really,” began Jackson, nearly making Jake lose his concentration. “Your wife and Councilman Jaha need you at a council meeting immediately. May I please come in?”

            Jake paused, frowning. _Council meeting? What for?_

“I’ll be right there,” he called back, muffled as he faced forward. He almost had the tablet out...

            “Mr. Griffin?! _Please_ open the door! I have Commander Shumway here, too. He’ll break it down if you don’t come out!”

            “For crying out loud,” muttered Jake, catching the tablet as it slipped out from behind the desk. He quickly shuffled backwards out from underneath, pocketing it into his satchel and straightened his clothes, just as Shumway overrode the household entry code and the door swooshed open.

            Jake met Shumway’s cold eyes with an equally cool look, arms folded. Jackson stood nervously behind the intimidating Asian man, eyes darting back and forth between the two.

            “What took you so long?” questioned Shumway quietly, looking around the room, and then at Jake and the several large dust balls that collected on his dirty, white Henley.

            Jake shrugged. “You caught me while I was looking under the desk for a pencil I dropped some time ago. It was the first free time I had to look for it.”

            Shumway hummed, noncommittally, and then stood aside, indicating Jake to precede him. “If you’d like, Mr. Griffin?”

            Jake gave the man a tight smile in response and swept away from his home for several years, knowing it likely would be the last time he’d ever see it. He didn’t linger.

**

            Murphy refused to get into the water to obtain the seaweed, especially after hearing Octavia’s story about the “huge eel” that bit her when they neared Mount Weather, so he left the task for Wells and Clarke, citing that someone needed to stand guard and watch over them.

            “Prick,” muttered Wells, a dark glare sent Murphy’s way as he and Clarke stood knee-deep in the cool, refreshingly clear pond water, shucking up glob-fulls of the vibrant red seaweed in soaking wet arms.

            Murphy, of course, didn’t hear; instead, he was reclined on a flat rock, chewing on some grass he found and staring up at the puffy clouds above him with his hands behind his head and one leg crossed over his knee.

            “At least he’s not bothering us,” replied Clarke, shaking her head before bending and yanking up some more seaweed. She wanted to get as much as possible. Wells held open a bag that they had found in the spaceship and Clarke dropped the sopping wet mess inside it, carefully tucking escaping tendrils in.

            “We’re almost done, anyway,” she continued. “And since we haven’t heard a single snide remark coming from him, that’s a win/win scenario for me.”

            “You’re not the one he threatened to kill,” argued Wells.

            “I’m pretty sure if he could figure out a way for me to ‘disappear’ without pissing Bellamy off, he would,” replied Clarke dryly, looking up at Wells from a lock of blonde hair. “We’re not besties.”

            Wells snorted. “No, once upon time that was me. Now I’m not even sure anymore.”

            Clarke glanced away, taking in the beautiful, serene shoreline of the large lake. The shallow end was where the seaweed fungus grew, so she and Wells didn’t have to step far into the water, especially if there were more mutated and large sea creatures dwelling in the depths. But around them – around them were lush, tall trees with sweeping leaves and branches that touched the ground; bird calls and crickets, and the fresh scent of perfumed flowers and nuts from small nearby bushes. As far as Earth went in beauty, it won full points.

            “How did you get arrested?” Clarke asked instead.

            Wells took the next armful she had – _one of the last_ , he thought – and placed it in the very heavy shoulder bag he had. He carefully considered how to answer her; did he owe her anything with how she was treating him?

            He sighed. “I deliberately vandalized Shumway’s office. It was the only thing I could think of to get into the Sky Box as quickly as possible without my father interfering.”

            Clarke’s lips twitched. “I can’t think of someone more deserving than Shumway.”

            “Yeah, me either,” he snorted in agreement. “Anyway, I only did it once I overheard my dad and some of the council talking about the living situation on the Ark. I remembered what you told me about your dad’s research, about the oxygen and how much time we had – and then realized my dad knew and wasn’t doing anything.”  
            Clarke’s head jerked up in surprise. “You didn’t tell him?”

            Wells shot her a glance. “Tell my dad?”

            “About my dad’s plan.”

            “No!” Wells looked shocked, his mouth open and his face pale. “Not at all!”

            Clarke looked at the water, stilling. “Oh.”

            “Oh?” then, Wells shook himself. “You thought _I_ told on your dad?” A twist of his lips made his normally calm face turn into one of disgust. “Well. That explains some things.”

            Wells turned in the water, bringing his legs up high to trudge out of the shallows, towards Murphy who was now sitting upright. He was angry – it was in the very way his shoulders were tense, the purposeful, powerful, and long strides he took towards someone he _hated_ and away from Clarke.

            “Wells!” Clarke shouted after him, her smaller frame finding it harder to push the water away and make it towards the shore. “Wells, _I’m sorry_!”

            Wells ignored her, and Murphy’s face held a wide, beaming smile at their arguing. Instead, Clarke’s best friend turned to Murphy and uttered a terse, “let’s go.”

            Clarke, now taking up the rear as Wells pushed forward into the foliage and back to their camp, sighed in disappointment. Her father _had_ told her that Wells wasn’t the one to inform his father about her dad’s plans, but... it had made sense. He was the only other person who knew what Jake Griffin was planning to do. Wasn’t he?

            “Trouble in paradise, Princess?” whistled Murphy joyfully with his hands in his trouser pockets, brushing past her to follow Wells. Clarke scowled and began stomping after them.

            When they arrived back at camp, they were surprised by how much hustle and bustle there was. Teens were running around, back and forth, carrying large sticks or in small groups carrying larger tree trunks, and several other teens were sitting around in a circle attempting to make spears and lathing down some rocks into tools.

            The three stopped short of the space ship wing, near the forest clearing, and watched with open mouths and wide eyes. Clarke spotted Monroe with John – the tall young adult who said would both support her – braiding together some long, dried leaves with a few of the younger delinquents.

            “Monroe!” called out Clarke, as she began walking closer to the girl. Wells walked past her straight into the ship with the seaweed, and Murphy muttered something about finding Bellamy, leaving Clarke alone.

            “Hey, Clarke,” greeted the brunette. “Did you find what you needed?”

            “Yes,” she replied, blue eyes taking in the clearing. “But what’s going on here?”

            Monroe’s face shuttered. “When you left, Bellamy was asking about two others – a couple – that went missing. We found them.”

            Horrified visions of mangled bodies strapped to trees, ripped apart limbs or spiked bodies from the booby-trap bait popped up in Clarke’s mind, one flashing after another, each more horrifying than the last. “What happened?” she whispered.

            Monroe shrugged. “Dunno, I didn’t see them. But they were dead.”

            “Burnt,” spoke John for the first time. His voice was low, and he was quiet, but everyone around them heard what he had to say. “They were burnt. But it didn’t look like a fire got to them.”

            Before Clarke had time to wonder how John would know what burn victims would look like, Wells was shouting her name and she realized she had a patient to tend. Nodding at John and Monroe, Clarke turned on her heel and went straight into the ship, up to the second floor compartment. She saw Monty already mashing the seaweed with a mortar and pestle someone had found in one of the crates kindly left to them by the Ark; Octavia was tending to a fire and Wells had a bowl of water to the side, ready for her. Finn was hovering near the back.

            “So how are we going to do this?” gruffly asked Wells, still avoiding looking directly at Clarke. Ignoring the tense, strained air between them would be difficult, but they had a job to do.

            Clarke pushed her arm sleeves up past her elbows. “Boil the water. We’ll need a lot more of it, because I need to disinfect my hands, _and_ the cloth we’re going to use. Monty, keep grinding that into as small pieces as you can – a dusting would be great. Then, we’re going to add some water to it, and then more seaweed until it turns more into a paste. Once it’s a paste, I’m going to clean out Jasper’s wound as much as possible, clean any pus out from it, and then we’re going to pack the paste _into_ the cut. Afterwards, we’re going to turn it into a tea for him to ingest.”

            Clarke looked at everyone in the small room – Octavia, Wells, Monty, Finn – and made sure she held their eyes. “I won’t lie; Jasper’s going to _scream_. Wells, you and Finn are going to have to hold him down when I do this. Octavia, you might have to run interference with your brother if it comes to it. Monty, keep working on that pestle and mortar, and then get a separate bowl ready for the tea.”

            The four all nodded, grimly, and went to their tasks. Octavia also left the ship to speak with her brother and warn him, but also to get more water.

            “This is going to be the equivalent to a saline pack,” said Clarke quietly, as dusk fell. They were ready to apply the seaweed to Jasper, but wholly unsure if it would work. “The wound will clean itself with it, and then slowly heal and scar over.”

            “But he’ll live?” asked Monty fearfully, his mouth a straight line except for the tiniest of quivers.

            Clarke wet her lips. “If it works, yeah. He’ll have a bitch of a scar, but he’ll be alive.”

            “Then what are we waiting for?” asked Octavia, straight to the point.

            Finn and Wells moved into place, with Finn at his feet and Wells holding Jasper’s shoulders down. Octavia and Monty hovered behind Clarke to act as assistant.

Grimacing, Clarke plunged her hands into the scalding water of a prepared bowl, and then dropped the ripped cloth into another; she felt tears leak from the corners of her eyes and she bit her lip to keep from whimpering at the pain. Her hands might blister and the skin might peel from the water, but if she was quick enough to used the same seaweed as a salve and bandage her hands too...

Dipping the cloth into the bowl of paste, Clarke then generously scooped and swiped it onto Jasper’s exposed wound, which Octavia had previously checked for pus. The skin around it was still inflamed, and his skin was burning hot to the touch around the wound, but it meant his body was fighting. Clarke applied the paste, ensuring it was evenly spread.

Jasper was moaning throughout, shifting restlessly on the floor, but Wells and Finn kept a tight hold on him. Finally, once the wound was covered, and Wells helped lift Jasper’s upper body so Octavia could wrap a roll of cloth around his chest and wound; only then did Clarke turn to her hands, which were shaking from adrenaline and pain.

Octavia helped her, too, once the salve spread across the back of Clarke’s hands and palms. With a grateful sigh, Clarke settled onto her haunches and quietly said, “Now we wait.”

            So they did.

**

            Clarke was woken up by a loud, long, piercing noise. Around her, Octavia, Monty, and Wells all jerked awake too, silently looking around as they tried to pinpoint it. Finn had disappeared at some point.

            “I’m going to see what that was,” whispered Clarke in the quiet of the night. No one answered her, but she heard the others settling back down. In the quiet, Clarke listened briefly to Jasper’s even breathing, and felt hope.

            Upon exiting the ship, Clarke spotted Bellamy staring off at the forest. Around him, there were some torches stuck in the ground, and the eerie glow illuminated and shone off his shiny and dark hair, casting shadows to the sharp panes of his face.

            “Hey,” she said lowly, coming to stand next to him. “What was that?”

            Bellamy didn’t move his eyes from scanning the forest. “A horn. It was a call.”

            “A call for what?”

            “Dunno, Princess,” he replied, finally turning to her. His eyes dipped down from her face to where her hands were clutching her jacket tightly around her in the evening chill. He frowned. “What happened to your hands?”

            “Hmm? Oh,” Clarke looked down and then back at Bellamy. “I needed to disinfect my hands and the cloth we used on Jasper. So into boiling water they went.”

            A muscle ticked under Bellamy’s eye. “You did what?”

            Clarke met his eyes steadily. “There wasn’t any other choice in the matter.”

            “There’s always a choice,” retorted Bellamy darkly. “You just didn’t choose the right one.”

            “That’s a matter of perspective,” sniffed Clarke, squaring her jaw in defense by sticking it out.

            Bellamy snorted and shook his head. “No. It’s a matter between being who we want to be, and who we need to be down here to survive; you just _want_ to help everyone. It clouds your judgment.”

            Clarke rubbed her forehead with a balled up hand, suddenly were exhausted. They had been on the ground less than a week and in uncharted territory in more ways than one.

            “I’m not going to fight,” muttered Clarke tiredly.

            Bellamy sighed. “Get some sleep, Princess. Can’t have you fainting on us in the morning.”

            “Ugh,” Clarke made a face. “Enough with the nickname already.” She turned to leave Bellamy standing sentinel but had only made it a few steps before she turned back to him. “Jasper’s going to make it, I think. He’s still in pain but I think he’s through the worst of it.”

            Bellamy quirked a tiny smile in thanks, and then turned to face forward again, leaving Clarke to return to the drop ship.

*

            Jake never liked Jackson; there was something dodgy about him that just didn’t sit right - like the devoted look on his face when Abby spoke, or the way he eagerly leapt at her beck and call - whatever it was, Jake just didn’t like it.

            He liked following the man less, as Jackson and Shumway dropped him off at the Council chambers, citing something about an emergency session and the Council members needing his opinion on something or the other. Honestly, Jake was barely paying attention; his mind was a few hours ahead, of using the drop ship shortly and making his way to Clarke.

The barren council chamber reminded Jake of the stark, sterile look that much of the Ark shared; there were few areas of life and beauty on board the space station and less exhibited in the people.

Jaha was at his usual seat, lounging slightly sideways in a slouch with an elbow resting on the table and a finger at his temple. Jake couldn’t remember the amount of times he had seen the man practice that position for a ‘casual, but attentive’ pose. Marcus Kane was at his usual seat too, but there was a nervous energy around the man, one visible in the tight corner of his eyes, the terseness of his mouth, or the pale, chalky white pallor to his face. Abby was across from Kane, staring ahead at the man with a furrowed brow and pursed lips in a sign Jake could easily read as annoyed. The rest at the circular table, men and women he didn’t know by name but by sight alone, were all equally tense.

“Jake,” greeted Jaha, turning his head and maintaining his position.

“Chancellor,” replied Jake evenly, meeting his ex-best friends’ eyes, before moving around the table to kiss his wife on the top of her head. “What’s this about? What can I help you with?”

“Mr. Griffin,” spoke up Kane quickly, “According to a report you filed some time ago, the Ark is running out of air. Is this correct?”

“It is,” replied Jake slowly. They had known about his report for over a year, since Clarke took the fall for him just before her seventeenth birthday. What was going on?

“The beginning of oxygen deprivation have begun in the young and elderly, as well as a sick in the med bay,” began Abby. “A father brought his daughter to me today, and she’s gone blind in one eye because of it!”

Jake nodded, because he was following along but still unsure of why he was in that room. Marcus Kane helped him. “I am putting forth a motion to cut the air supply from Section 17 during a routine work schedule in order to buy us more time. It would mean the loss of one hundred people, but we would survive a bit longer to figure something out.”

_Ah,_ thought Jake.

“What was the result of the vote?” he asked.

Kane’s mouth tightened. “Unresolved.”

“Oh?” asked Jake in surprise.

“It’s a split vote with the Chancellor to break it,” an older man with a beard volunteered the information to Jake, who turned to look at Jaha curiously.

“You’re sanctioning the murder of one hundred people,” broke in Abby furiously, her brown eyes flashing at Kane.

“One hundred people who would sacrifice their lives so we have a bit more time!” argued back Kane, just as furiously.

“They would suffocate! Do you know what it’s like? Your body straining to take in more air when it is incapable of doing so? The panic that would eat up what remaining air there is? _Knowing_ you are going to die as spots flash in front of your eyes and you sink into unconsciousness?” Abby spat at the man.

“Jake,” began Jaha, attempting to diffuse the situation, “Please, as the Chief Engineer, can you tell us where we stand with our life support system?”

“Nowhere good,” replied Jake honestly. “Sending the kids to earth bought us a few days up here to make decisions, but another one hundred will really only buy us ten days, at most. The amount of people up here versus what the system is pumping out does not equate.”

“Can the system be fixed?” another council member asked, this one a woman.

Jake shook his head. “I’ve been trying since I discovered the components slowly shutting themselves off a year ago. Things are just… old. It’s breaking down. Everything is falling apart, and the life support system is included in that. I’ve patched it up numerous times, and so has my crew, with whatever we can find or take from somewhere else nonessential. But we’re just about done with it’s holding together with tape, spit, and a lot of hope.”

“How long do we have? What viable options do we have then?” asked the same bearded man from earlier, folding his hands on the tabletop.

Jake glanced at Abby, who was watching his carefully. “Maybe four months if we’re lucky,” shrugged Jake. “But honestly? Earth or bust. Literally. We can’t fix it anymore; we’re out of options.”

“The kids need more time!” argued Abby. “The Earth is habitable! I know it!”

“You might know it, Abby, but _we_ don’t,” sighed Jaha. “Don’t forget, my son is there too, and I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”

“We _need_ to commence with the Population Reduction Plan,” gritted Marcus Kane, heatedly. “Today it’s two-hundred and nine people. In ten days, it’s two-hundred and nine _teen_. Every day, it’s another ten people.”

All heads turned to Jaha.

The man sighed. “We never asked for this. We never asked for any of this.”

The man waved a hand lazily, indicating the whole, encompassing Ark. He shifted his position, leaned forward, elbows on the table, and poised in front of him, in a steeple. “We were supposed to be the transitional generation - the generation that figured out how to get back to the Earth, back to the ground. Now we’re either the ones who return or the ones who die out. And maybe… maybe after what we do, what we’ve done to survive up here… maybe we _should_ die out.”

Kane scoffed and leaned back in his seat.

“How does the Chancellor vote?” demanded the bearded man.

“I don’t know if my son is dead, or if he’s alive,” continued Jaha, ignoring the councilmember. “But… I have hope.”

“But _how does the Chancellor vote_?” the man demanded again.

Jaha focused his attention on the man. “I don’t.”

“You can’t not vote,” argued Kane. “You need to break the tie.”

“I abstain for voting,” replied Jaha simply.

“You can’t!” snapped Kane.

“Chancellor,” the bearded man said with thinly held patience, “If you abstain, the council will automatically meet again in ten days to take up this proposal.”

“That’s over three hundred dead!” argued Kane loudly.

“How does the Chancellor vote?” the man tried one last time.

“I don’t,” repeated Jaha, calmly, and Kane slammed his hands on the table in anger, pushing back his chair in a solid movement that had it toppling behind him to the floor. The man stalked out of the room.

Jaha looked at Abby carefully, and as the other council members were standing and rising or talking amongst themselves, he said so lowly on Abby and Jake heard him: “You have ten days to prove that I made the right decision, or those three hundred lives are on you.”

Abby swallowed, but nodded, and with a peck on the cheek to her husband, she disappeared from the room with Jackson on her heels, leaving the two old friends.

“What are we going to do, Jake?” asked Jaha tiredly.

Jake eyed him shrewdly. “You knew what I wanted to do, ages ago. But you and Abby stopped it and now look where we are.”

Jaha closed his eyes. “It was a mistake. I thought, and still believe, that the citizens will riot.”

Jake scoffed. “Funny, for a man who says he believes in hope, you don’t have a lot of belief in others.” Jake shook his head and turned to leave the chamber, with a final parting shot.

“It didn’t have to be this way, Thelonius,” said Jake, his voice carrying in the empty room. “We could’ve figured out a way to save a lot more people. And now three hundred are going to die. Can you live with that?”

“I think I’ll have to,” replied Jaha quietly, and Jake left him.

*

            Jasper was moaning, quietly writhing as his fever spiked, but Clarke was hopeful. A fever and a sweat, as well as a vocal response, meant he was fighting. If Jasper were lying quietly, she would’ve been more worried.

            As it was, she, along with Monty, Octavia, Wells and Finn when he would be in the top layer of the drop ship, were taking turns staying up and watching Jasper carefully for any adverse changes to his condition. So far, there was none.

            “How much longer is he going to be like this?” asked Monty, staring at his best friend.

            “Awhile,” said Clarke with a sigh. “We need to get him drinking something soon or else he’s going to be too dehydrated for anything. Let’s sit him up and try to get the tea in him.”

            With some manoeuvring Wells held Jasper up with Monty’s help and Clarke helped Jasper drink the drink by massaging his neck gently to encourage the muscles. They continue doing this every half hour or so, encouraging Jasper to sip a little at a time.

            It was when they were doing this that they heard the loud commotion below, the coughs, and the raised voices.

            “I’ll go see what’s going on,” said Clarke, scrambling down the ladder two flights and to the ground of the drop ship, which was becoming overrun with the other teenagers.

            She spotted Murphy hacking as he darted inside, while two other teens shut the door of the drop ship and Monroe began stuffing parachutes into the cracks of the walls.

            “What’s going on?” Clarke asked, turning to Murphy, whom Bellamy had left in charge while he and a few others went out hunting for meat.

            Murphy rasped, “Dunno, some weird fog. We heard that horn again, from last night, and then all of a sudden, this thick yellow fog descended on the camp. It burned anyone who came into contact with it.”

            “Is everyone okay?” asked Clarke, turning to look at the group with a medically oriented eye. “How many are here? Is that everyone? Was anyway still outside?”

            Murphy shook his head. “Just Bellamy and his group. Everyone else is here.”

            “Okay,” sighed Clarke. “Anyone with visible, physical burns on their body should come up and see me if they can. If not, I’ll bring a salve down to them. Let’s stay in here for awhile and try to monitor the fog from the control panel room at the very top of the drop ship. I’ll ask Monty to take a look.”

            Murphy coughed and nodded.

            “Are you okay?” Clarke asked, briefly touching his shoulder before yanking her hand back.

            “I’ll live,” wryly replied Murphy, stalking off to commandeer a hammock.

            Clarke shook her head, and went back upstairs, eager to remain with the saner group of the delinquents. They would wait the fog out with patience, and determination.

_But_ , Clarke thought, they were going to need to learn things awfully quick; they were at a disadvantage being newcomers to the ground, but in order to survive, they had to adapt. And adapt quickly.

And maybe not all of them were going to do it quickly enough to survive.

*

It was early morning when Murphy, Clarke, Wells, and Finn opened the drop ship door to see if the fog was gone. They were greeted by a dewy morning, thick with humidity and a few chirps here or there. The sky was just beginning to lighten, tinged a dreamy blue with yellow and orange streaks. The forest itself was quiet, everything still mostly asleep.

But Bellamy’s group had been gone all night, and although no one voiced it, they were all worried and on edge.

With Wells and Finn leading the way and using their old Earth Skills class training, Clarke and Murphy quietly followed, eyes peeled on the ground, under bushes and in trees, wondering if they were going to find dead bodies, or their friends, alive.

It was a scream that burst through the quiet of the forest, making all of them jump in surprise and then with wide-eyes, stare at each other. Finally, Wells snapped, “I think it came from this direction!” and the four were off, racing towards the scream.

Clarke skidded through the loose dirt and under a branch, Murphy just behind her as she came to a sudden stop. In the clearing before her, Bellamy was leaning over Atom, his hand uselessly hovering over the teenager, who was gasping and opening his mouth, trying to formulate words.

A young girl, no more than ten or twelve, stood on a landing overlooking Bellamy and Atom; Finn made his way to her and turned her to face the opposite direction.

Murphy, Clarke, and Wells slowly eased their way towards Bellamy.

“What happened?” asked Wells, his eyes darting up and down the teen’s frame.

Clarke took a mental catalogue: cataracts on his eyes, pocket blisters that were oozing pus and scarring on his cheeks, the faint stench of sulfur; Atom had burned alive like Trina and Pascal, but only he was still alive hours later.

_He must be in agony_ , thought Clarke sympathetically. Murphy’s mouth was twisted in disgust.

“Spacewalker,” snapped Bellamy, turning to face Finn, “Take Charlotte back to camp. Take Murphy with you.”

“Bell-Bell-a-my,” gapped out the teen.

Finn stared at Bellamy.

Bellamy ignored Atom and growled, “ _Now_.”

Finn rolled his eyes, but he and Murphy - who seemed pleased to be leaving - disappeared in the foliage.

“Bellamy,” wheezed Atom. “Ki--Kill me.”

A torn look overcame Bellamy’s face, one-half twisted with anguish and the other disgust.

Clarke shook her head. It was so obvious to her now; everything since he landed with them began to come together.

Clarke knelt beside Atom, and when her eyes caught Bellamy’s, she shook her head. Atom was not going to recover like Jasper was.

“I--” began Bellamy, frustrated by the lack of words. “I-- Atom, I--”

He looked down at his hand, where his makeshift knife with a blue handle gently rested in his palm. Killing an animal was easy, but one of his own?

Clarke gently reached out across Atom, and folded her hand around his with the knife, Bellamy’s slack grasp allowing her to pull the knife from his hand into hers. She changed the grip and then began smoothing Atom’s hair from his forehead. Underneath the cataracts, she saw Atom’s eyes shift and move towards her.

She wet her lips and began humming. “Shh,” she said quietly, and with a practiced hand, slid the knife into the side of Atom’s neck where his jugular was, and then slid the knife back out. Immediately, blood gushed out in hot spurts, pooling around Atom’s neck, shoulder and his head, spreading out through the leaves, twigs, and rocks.

Bellamy was staring at Clarke, but she didn’t notice; her eyes were on Atom’s figure, and smoothing his hair as she watched the life quickly drain from him, his gasping body shuddering and lying still.

“I…” gapped Bellamy as Clarke slowly rose to stand above Atom’s body. He mimicked her, and looked down at the bloody knife but her not-bloody hands.

Clarke met his eyes. “I know.”

Bellamy nodded, eyes cut sideways as he realized what he couldn’t say.

Wells, who remained silent, stepped forward and pulled out a blanket he had tucked in his messenger bag, the same one used to gather the seaweed for Jasper. The three silently wrapped Atom in it, and once the corners were tucked, Wells lifted his feet and Bellamy took his shoulders, and the three made the long walk back to the drop ship.

*****

**Sebastien** : “You're strong, there's no doubt in that. But neither of you fight with a killer instinct. Let me show you how to go for the throat.”

\- “Apotheosis,” _Teen Wolf_ season 5, episode 20

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay; second year of the PhD was incredibly busy and I'm still working on finishing up marking that's due on Monday, as well as a final essay due within the next two weeks... which I haven't started. On the positive, I get to rewatch "Sense8"? 
> 
> Will admit that this chapter only popped out due to the fact that I got a friend hooked on the 100 so I've been watching season 1 with her, and then my husband got jealous because he realized he started with season 2 and got obsessed, so now he wants to go back to season 1 and figure out how everyone got to where they were.... Should have time in May, or June, to get another chapter out (here's hoping!); all depends on whether or not my "Teen Wolf" and "iZombie" proposals get accepted for publication. If so, I'm spending my summer writing those chapters -- sorry!


End file.
